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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Whitby
You can almost taste the kippers as the herring is hung over the smoking sawdust in a back street, in a film that gives a real flavour of Whitby.
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Overview
This well-crafted film focuses on the famous Fortune family kipper business in Whitby, as told by a local fisherman. In a very personal film, our narrator recounts his own experience of life in the town and as a fisherman. We follow the journey of the Fortune family as they bring back their catch and prepare the herrings for smoking, while the women skein the mussels, feeding the leftovers to the ever hungry gulls.
The Fortune family started smoking herring in 1872 at 20 Henrietta Street, in the historic east-side of Whitby, near the famous 199 steps which lead up to Whitby Abbey. The house was sold in 1993 when the aunt passed away and the business relocated. Six generations on, the family business is still going strong. The swing bridge in Whitby still has its “house”, and is still manned two hours either side of high water. The song at the end, The Shoals of Herring was sang and written by Ewan MacColl for the BBC Radio ballads, ‘Singing the Fishing’, first broadcast in 1960. One of the filmmakers, Buff Kim, went on to have a career as a mixed media artist, photographer and printmaker.
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