Brompton Whit

A typically beautifully shot film by Yorkshire film masters the Ramsdens, meandering through Buttercup Valley, roaming in Rosedale and, as usual, visiting a pub.

This is one of many examples of Leeds couple Betty and Cyril Ramsden filming one of their holidays in Yorkshire just after the end of the war. This time a visit to the quiet village of Brompton in Hambleton, followed by a languid stroll through fields of buttercups, and finally, watching the fishermen bringing in lobsters and mending their nets on the pier in Scarborough.

Betty and Cyril Ramsden, prominent members of Leeds Cine Club, began making their large collection of films in 1945 and continued into the mid-1960s. Cyril had a dental practice in Headingley. Their film collection was made the subject of a BBC/Open University television programme, Nation on Film (2006). Brompton is associated with two famous figures in British history: the pioneering aeronautical engineer Sir George Cayley, who lived there, and the poet William Wordsworth, who got married there, to Mary Hutchinson at All Saints' Church in 1802. Sadly, it seems, Buttercup Valley is not a buttercup valley any more.