The Yorkshire Film Archive collects, preserves, and shows film made in, or about Yorkshire. Our collections are non-fiction, dating from the 1890s to the present day, and providing a rich and visually compelling record of all aspects of lives, cultures, landscape, industries, major events and everyday activities, many of which are available to watch, free of charge, on our website.
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Summer Excursion 1948: To Ramsgill and Fountains Abbey
A rare home movie by a professional filmmaker who has wonderfully caught the flavour of a group outing in Yorkshire shortly after the war, among them a Gazza lookalike.
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Overview
This is lovely film by Bradford filmmaker Charles Wood of his family with an unidentified group on a coach tour of the small village of Ramsgill in Nidderdale, and Byland Abbey, in 1948. Wood presents pen portraits of many of the characters on the trip as they visit, among other places, the Yorke Arms on the village green; now a Michelin-starred restaurant made famous by Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in their TV comedy The Trip.
Unusually for a C.H. Wood film, the opening titles highlight that this is filmed in “Kodachrome Natural Colour”, marking the fact that this was one of the first times Wood had used Kodachrome, and the significance this had. Markedly superior to other colour film of the time, and arguably since, the renowned photographer Steve McCurry has said that, in comparison to other colour film, “Kodachrome had more poetry in it, a softness, an elegance.” Byland Abbey, somewhat overshadowed by its Cistercian neighbour Rievaulx, wasn’t listed until 1955, and much later still came under the control of English Heritage.
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