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During the 1930s and 1940s amateur film maker Major Gill extensively recorded working and community life in the South West, on 16mm film. His films, many in colour, make up a thorough and extensive record of working practices in the region. His collection includes subjects such as quarrying and mining, fishing, dairy farming, boat building and sailing, the china clay industry, serpentine stone machining, slate works in Delabole, and wolfram mining in St Agnes. This clip shows the workings of the 'South Crofty Tin Mine' near Camborne in Cornwall. This mine was the last working tin mine in Britain until its closure in 1988. Gill also filmed unusual and small-scale industries such as bark collecting for tanning, coppicing and woodland management, and local pottery works. In his films, Major Gill often captured rare images of people in regional dress, made reference to rural dialect or caught on camera traditions that characterise the cultural and industrial heritage of the South West. Other examples of films in the South West Film & Television Archive’s collection capturing images of traditional working and community life in the region include films made for the Cornish company, Holmans, a world famous maker of heavy mining machinery from 1802 to the present day; and films by Peter Kennedy who made recordings of rural music, dance and folklore traditions such as the Portland stone workers and their traditional working songs. The television collection (Westward, TSW and BBC South West) also includes many films that feature working and community life in the region, ranging from coverage of the various dockyards/boatyards to 'The Cider Drinkers' which features a rural cider press. |
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