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.
This film is part of Free
York Poor Children’s Fresh Air Fund (Off to Filey)
Just a trip out to the coast, but what an exciting day for hundreds of poor children from York, home of those early campaigners against poverty, the Rowntrees.
From the collection of:
Overview
It is some time in the 1920s, and a large collection of charabancs and buses of all shapes and sizes have been gathered to take the poor children of York, of all shapes and sizes, out to the “fresh air” of Filey, on the east coast of Yorkshire. Parents, and those children left behind, wave enthusiastically as the youngsters escape the smoke of the city, if only for one day in the year.
Very little is known of the maker of this film, George Trafford Drayton, other than that he ran the Tower Pictorial Cinema on New Street in York for a number of years. He made several other similar films of local events that he would show in his cinema. He did write and direct one fiction film, Dick Turpin and his Famous Ride to York, in 1933, along with York Movie Makers. The former Methodist Chapel became a cinema in York in 1908, and was subsequently bought by Tower Cinemas in 1920. The Fresh Air Fund was an idea that originated in New York in the 1870s and established in London in 1892 by publishing magnate Arthur Pearson. It soon spread to the major cities, and by the 1920s millions had benefitted across the country.
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