Metadata
WORK ID: YFA 5252 (Master Record)
| Title | Year | Date |
| BATTLE OF THE ROSES | 1930 | 1930-01-01 |
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Details
Original Format: 16mm Colour: Black & White Sound: Silent Duration: 11 mins 19 secs Subject: Sport |
| Summary This is a film of various events taking place in Scarborough, including the May Day Procession, sporting, and fun activities which take place in Scarborough around the same time. |
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Description
This is a film of various events taking place in Scarborough, including the May Day Procession, sporting, and fun activities which take place in Scarborough around the same time.
Title – Battle of Roses, Crowning the Queen 1930
The film begins with a row of dignitaries, including the Mayor, sitting and watching the May Queen as she crowned on the steps of the Spa. The May Queen walks down the steps with a large escort of girls, all dressed in white with Easter bonnets, and followed by...
This is a film of various events taking place in Scarborough, including the May Day Procession, sporting, and fun activities which take place in Scarborough around the same time.
Title – Battle of Roses, Crowning the Queen 1930
The film begins with a row of dignitaries, including the Mayor, sitting and watching the May Queen as she crowned on the steps of the Spa. The May Queen walks down the steps with a large escort of girls, all dressed in white with Easter bonnets, and followed by children and adults in fancy dress. Watched by a large crowd of spectators, they make their way around the front of the Spa and then along the sea front, with Scarborough Castle in the distance. Some of those in fancy dress have placards attached to them declaring that they have won a prize in the fancy dress competition. They are followed by a procession of highly decorated cars, again displaying which class they are in and whether they have won a prize. Many of those in fancy dress are larking about, with one man dressed as a woman looking especially pleased with himself. This is followed by a visit to the South Bay Lido where there is some crazy diving from the board. An escapologist is tied up and then dives in to emerge free from his bonds. Some women play with a large inflated ball in the swimming pool advertising the Daily Mail.
Out at sea there are several boats, and the Lifeboat gets hauled ashore and pulled back into its house. A group of people disembark from a leisure boat. In Peasholme Park people are also out in rowing boats. Several men are out on the water in tubs trying to row themselves, and others are clowning about in boats and playing various silly games. Some men dressed comically as policemen wade into the water, while others try to play cricket on the water. A group of women dressed as gypsies are selling ice creams. On the ground there are various other games, and some girls, also dressed as gypsies, do a dance and acrobatic performance.
On the small boating lake two women are out in hand-propelled boats. At a skating rink, a man in a navy uniform shows off his skating skills. This is followed by a game of men’s hockey at a small stadium, and then another game of men’s hockey being played on roller skates. At the fairground adults and children are riding on the dodgems, with people in the background watching ‘Skee Ball.’ Elsewhere some men and women are playing tennis. The film ends with crickets walking onto the pitch for a match being played at the North Marine Road cricket Ground at Scarborough.
Title – The End
Context
The maker of this fascinating film is a mystery, it being discovered in a house clearance, finding its way in 1959 to the projectionist of the Rex Cinema in Elland, Peter Berry, who deposited it with the YFA. We can only be thankful to whoever the filmmaker was. The title too is something of an enigma. Scarborough has been a popular seaside tourist destination since the 17th century; the spring water that was discovered to occur naturally in the area drew people in from miles around....
The maker of this fascinating film is a mystery, it being discovered in a house clearance, finding its way in 1959 to the projectionist of the Rex Cinema in Elland, Peter Berry, who deposited it with the YFA. We can only be thankful to whoever the filmmaker was. The title too is something of an enigma. Scarborough has been a popular seaside tourist destination since the 17th century; the spring water that was discovered to occur naturally in the area drew people in from miles around. People believed drinking spa water could cure all manner of diseases and this greatly helped the development of tourism in Scarborough. Bathing in sea water also became fashionable during the 18th century, furthering the town’s popularity. The fishing and shipbuilding industries flourished and so did its population, helped by the arrival of the railway in 1845, which also helped increase the number of holidaymakers visiting the town.
The film focuses on various May Day celebrations in and around Scarborough. May Day has roots in pagan tradition, when the ancient Celts of Britain celebrated the festival of Beltane, which saw the arrival of summer. May Day was a popular festival up until the sixteenth century, when zealousness and pagan connotations caused the Christian church to ban all May Day celebrations. The celebrations were completely banned once Oliver Cromwell’s puritan regime took over the country in 1645. Something as innocent as Maypole dancing was described as ‘a heathenish vanity, generally abused to superstition and wickedness’ and a law was passed which banned maypoles nationwide! This ban only lasted until the restoration of the Charles II in 1660 and supporters erected a huge 40-foot maypole in London, symbolising the return of the festival and the end of Cromwell’s oppressive commonwealth. May Day also has strong connotations with socialism and anti-capitalism. The general strike of 3rd May – 13th May 1926 used May Day celebrations to inform and rally coal miners against the government, whose six-month subsidy to the mining industry had ran out. The Trade Union Act of 1927 imposed restrictions on people’s right to strike as a result of this, and was unsurprisingly met with resentment by workers and trade unionists. Opposition to this Act came to a head during the 1927 May Day celebrations, where mass protests were held throughout the country. The Communist Party continued to use May Day as a platform for their politics and ideology throughout the 1930s. The ‘Red’ May Day celebrations lost popularity somewhat with the rise of Stalin as leader of the Soviet Union in the 1920s; communism was now considered a dirty word. By the 1960s the British public’s enthusiasm for May Day demonstrations had begun to wane, with many northern towns abandoning the traditional yearly demonstrations. More recently, enthusiasm for politically charged May Days reappeared, with minorities and pressure groups like the CND and Amnesty International joining in, rather than the sole focus being that of trade unionists and communists. May Day was named a national holiday in 1978, with the hopes that the traditional celebrations like the ones seen in this film could once again be a common sight on May 1st. The first scene in this film is the crowning of the May Queen, which is a traditional aspect of any May Day celebration; The May Queen is essentially the personification of May Day. She is thought to represent purity, fertility and youthfulness and she would be dressed all in white to reiterate this symbolism. References: http://www.localhistories.org/scarborough.html http://www.sahs.org.uk/resources/Commarch/ANECDOTES%20Richard%20Percy.pdf http://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/May-Day-Celebrations/ Peterson, Abby and Reiter, Herbert, The Ritual of May Day in Western Europe: Past, Present and Future, Routledge, 2016. |
