This is a film taken by R Heaton, a member of the Yorkshire District Association of The Camping Club of Great Britain and Ireland.  The film shows various Camping Club meetings, including Birmingham District Association’s Golden Jubilee in 1957, camps with Staffs and Leicester DAs and the National Feast of Lanterns at Manton in 1958. Intertitle – Beaudesert.  BDA Jubilee 1957 The film begins at the Beaudesert Park Campsite, Staffordshire, with decorated tents for the Golden Jubilee....

This is a film taken by R Heaton, a member of the Yorkshire District Association of The Camping Club of Great Britain and Ireland.  The film shows various Camping Club meetings, including Birmingham District Association’s Golden Jubilee in 1957, camps with Staffs and Leicester DAs and the National Feast of Lanterns at Manton in 1958. Intertitle – Beaudesert.  BDA Jubilee 1957 The film begins at the Beaudesert Park Campsite, Staffordshire, with decorated tents for the Golden Jubilee. Intertitle – Clent.  Feast of the Lanterns 1957. Campers are gathering firewood for a bonfire at the Clent Hills campsite, in Worcestershire, which is then set ablaze in the evening. In the morning there is a caravan decorated with balloons and a golliwog and a sign for the Jubilee.  Tents, caravans and cars are dotted around the perimeter of the site.  The place of the bonfire still has a small fire burning.  A small boy plays with a football with a dog.  A mother plays with a baby, while two very young children stand in a pen.  There is a sign for ‘BDA – CDA’ and Staffs Section Feast of Lanterns September 1958, Beaudesert Old Park.  Welcome to all members’.  Some members are being handed out clipboards from the back of a Morris Minor van.  All the campers have gathered around in chairs in front of a table, to which as a small boy walks up to.  There is a very brief shot of a wooden cross on a stone grave. Intertitle – Port Eynon Aug. 1958 A couple hold up their baby for the camera.  A group of campers have gathered around a decorated caravan.  A Wolsey is parked next to two tents.  There is a road sign for Ilam, Dovedale, 2 miles.  There is a view of the surrounding hills from the campsite. Intertitle – Manton Feast of the Lanterns 1958 The campsite has lots of decorated tents, including a tepee.  In the evening there is a bonfire and in the daytime children watch a Punch and Judy show.  A service is held in the camp field and there is a brief shot of the two men stood in front of the local church.  The film switches to children in a three-legged race and a race which involves children in pairs holding each other while sat on the ground and pushing themselves over the ground.  This is followed by a wheelbarrow race.  The adults then have a race involving buckets, and one where a woman rides on the back of two men who have formed a bridge.  A group of women and girls sit around a bonfire.  They then go on a leisure boat ride along a river. Back at the campsite, adults do some country dancing, and they are later joined by children.  There then follows a mass sprint race of boys followed by a mass sprint race of girls.  Then a two legged race, after which the campers relax with their pet dogs. Mrs Chaberlain, the receptionist, poses for the camera.  A pigeon feeds off some bread.  There is a festival at a village, where Morris Dancers perform, with a castle gate symbol, outside the Lygon Arms.  There is a brief view of an old church. A group of campers sit in a circle on deckchairs outside their caravans with tables of drink and glasses.  Some piglets wander across the campsite.  A woman picks some yellow flowers.  Two men put up a tent and then a group of children sit outside a tent reading comics, and a boy plays with his dog.  Another group of children pose for the camera with dogs in a street. The End.