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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Wakefield Museum - Mast Demo
Three cloth capped workmen lean in obvious satisfaction against the steel tubular structure they have just felled as it lay across the countryside like some mythical serpent.
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Overview
A fascinating and mysterious short film of not one but several tall masts being demolished. Armed with blow torches and tea caddy, the workmen cut the steel cables that hold up, what must have been radio masts, and we see them fall as if in slow motion. The exact location in the Yorkshire countryside is unknown, presumably in the Wakefield area – perhaps at the site of the current Emley Moor Mast. But why were these being cut down in 1939? Was it war related, or was more power needed?
Although the first radio broadcast in the UK began in 1920, in Writtle Essex, it wasn’t until the BBC was formed in 1922 that transmitters went up in large numbers across the country the following year, including one at Wakefield (2AW 2JG). In 1939 television transmitters would have been going up, rather than coming down; and in any case on September 1st the BBC stopped its television service from Alexandra Palace. Alongside this, regional and national radio programmes were also closed and replaced by a single Home Service. A possible, though unlikely, explanation for demolition is that, as with TV signals, it was feared that radio transmissions might be of help to the German air force for finding directions.
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