The North East Film Archive is one of a network of regional film archives established to collect, preserve and show film made in, or about the North East of England. Our collections are non-fiction, and date from the early 1900s to the present day, providing a rich record of life in the region over the 20th century. Many of our films are available to watch, free of charge, on our website.
This film is part of Free
Yorkshire Riviera
A nostalgic dip and drive around the North Yorkshire coast in the sun-kissed 50s.
From the collection of:
Overview
Trains, boats, cars and funiculars are a recurring motif as Middlesbrough filmmaker Raymond Kitching takes us down to the salty, seafaring North Yorkshire coast. This scenic travelogue heads from South Gare to Scarborough sampling the seaside rituals and rides on the way. There’s foying in Redcar, the Coney Island of Cleveland, a stylish descent to Saltburn beach to stroll on the elegant pier, and a higgledy-piggledy, quaint confusion of red roofs at Robin Hood’s Bay.
The film concludes in the Queen of Yorkshire seaside resorts, historic Scarborough, with shots of the old cliff funicular beside the Grand Hotel, pleasure steamers, boating in Peasholm Park, and a ride on the Miniature North Bay Railway, opened in 1931. There is no sign on film of Redcar’s boisterous reputation. A 1930 Cleveland Standard ‘gossip’ feature was sniffy about the behaviour of female day-trippers to the resort, suggesting ‘some of the women from the pit country merely visit the seaside to indulge in a ‘wet’ afternoon and make themselves a nuisance and an eyesore’.