Metadata
WORK ID: YFA 5578 (Master Record)
| Title | Year | Date |
| FIRE BRIGADE YORK | 1935-1938 | 1935-01-01 |
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Details
Original Format: 9.5mm Colour: Black & White Sound: Silent Duration: 8 mins 10 secs Credits: Filmmaker Henry Foster Subject: Urban Life Transport Architecture |
| Summary Made by local butcher Henry Foster, this is a two part film of York in the 1930s. The first part shows the Opening of West Bank Park in Holgate, on July 23rd, 1938. The park, originally the grounds of West Bank House, was established in 1936–38 and included a statue of Queen Victoria that was originally in the Guildhall. The second part of the f ... |
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Description
Made by local butcher Henry Foster, this is a two part film of York in the 1930s. The first part shows the Opening of West Bank Park in Holgate, on July 23rd, 1938. The park, originally the grounds of West Bank House, was established in 1936–38 and included a statue of Queen Victoria that was originally in the Guildhall. The second part of the film shows the fire brigade attending the fire that wrecked the Rialto Cinema on Fishergate in April, 1935. The cinema was owned by composer John...
Made by local butcher Henry Foster, this is a two part film of York in the 1930s. The first part shows the Opening of West Bank Park in Holgate, on July 23rd, 1938. The park, originally the grounds of West Bank House, was established in 1936–38 and included a statue of Queen Victoria that was originally in the Guildhall. The second part of the film shows the fire brigade attending the fire that wrecked the Rialto Cinema on Fishergate in April, 1935. The cinema was owned by composer John Barry’s father, John Prendergast.
The film begins with people standing outside the gates of West Bank Park including a group of girls in school uniform. A dignitary opens one of the gates, and those gathered for the event, including some with pushchairs, make their way along the path into the park. More dignitaries arrive, including Alderman Hutchinson, and they all congregate at a wooden hut next to a bowling green. There is a glasshouse in the background. There are two speeches to those assembled, including one given by the Lord Mayor, William Cooper. The man who opened the gates digs a small hole with a shovel. The dignitaries pose for the camera and watch a game of bowls.
Intertitle – Fire! at the Rialto Cinema
A crowd of people, with quite a few boys, watch as three fire engines emerge from the Fire Station on Cumberland Street, next to the Police Station. Next, another crowd watches the remnants of the fire which has devastated the Rialto Cinema. Posters on the wall, at the side of the cinema which remains standing, advertise John Barrymore in ‘Long Lost Father’ and Otto Kruger in ‘The Crime Doctor’. On the other side of the cinema are hoardings for Bing Crosby in ‘She Loves Me Not’, and a Jubilee presentation of ‘Lives of a Bengal Lancer’. Fire engines arrive, and a tram passes by. The shop next to the cinema of, ‘G E Barton’ can also be seen. Hoses are laid along the street going towards the river. A fire ladder stands in the centre of the street where there is a coal lorry and opposite a restaurant.
At the front of the cinema there is the Rialto Fruit Shop. Firemen are hosing down what is left of the fire, sending up plumes of steam. A fireman sits on what remains of one of the cinema’s walls where he directes operations. The film shows the damage done to the cinema by the fire. Three men stand watching with a factory behind them. Fire chiefs stand talking at the front of the cinema where there is a fish shop and ‘Shepard and Son Ltd., Joiner and Building Contractors’.
Intertitle – Mr JX Prendergast
Prendergast, wearing a raincoat, looks around the damaged building. Firemen stand next to a fire engine parked next to a church. The cinema is seen with a collapsed roof, with firemen still hosing down, some on the precarious walls and what is left of the roof. A man is attending a pump near the river, next to a canon mounted on a plinth, near the Castle Museum. A fire engine stands outside what was the CIU building next to the cinema, where there are more advertising hoardings for the film releases.
Context
Fire Brigade York is one of a large collection of films donated to the archive by Henry Foster of Holgate, York. A grand total of 42 films were donated, all filmed mid to late 1930s. Some of the films are documenting big events in York; for example there is footage of flooding on Holgate Road, a Military Tattoo, various sporting events, processions and street celebrations as well as some commercial films and fictional films made with York Cine Club.
This clip is typical of the Foster...
Fire Brigade York is one of a large collection of films donated to the archive by Henry Foster of Holgate, York. A grand total of 42 films were donated, all filmed mid to late 1930s. Some of the films are documenting big events in York; for example there is footage of flooding on Holgate Road, a Military Tattoo, various sporting events, processions and street celebrations as well as some commercial films and fictional films made with York Cine Club.
This clip is typical of the Foster collection; it depicts a real-life event that does not have a manufactured plotline or story and can therefore be described as an “actuality” film. Actuality films are a type of non-fiction film and these were the pre-cursor to newsreel and documentary films. Amateur film-making became a very popular pastime during the 1920s once Eastmann Kodak had standardised 16mm film in 1923. This standardisation allowed for a wider participation in amateur filmmaking and made filmmaking and viewing an everyday experience for many, with amateur filmmakers bringing their camera along to different events – although Foster used 9.5mm, which was introduced even earlier, in 1922, by Pathé. The film begins with footage of the opening of West Bank Park, Acomb. This park was built between 1936 and 1938. The YFA has footage of this event as part of a separate film, Pot-Pourri – York, which has been dated 1939 so we can assume that this is the year the park was officially opened to the public. The park began life as a nursery in 1853, opened by the famous Backhouse family who were Victorian botanists, naturalists and horticulturists. The 1910 land tax and WWI caused a lack of demand for trained gardeners and expensive and labour-intensive gardens, meaning that the park suffered a loss of income which led to the grounds being bought by York City Corporation and transformed into the park we know today. A growing demand for cheap leisure activities occurred in the 1930s as the Great Depression took its toll on the wallets of the British public. Parks and open spaces offered fun and free days out for the whole family; a distraction which was welcome during this economic slump. The rest of the film shows a fire at the Rialto Cinema, York in April 1935 and the fire brigade fighting it. We see the owner, Jack Prendergast, observing the damage once the fire had been put out. The Rialto had originally started life as a roller-skating rink and was purchased by Mr Prendergast in the late 1920s. Mr Prendergast converted the building to house a cinema at the front and he converted the skating rink into a ballroom, transforming it into a music venue as well as a picture-house. The venue broke new ground; famous musicians Louis Armstrong and The Beatles were among the line-up of stars that played on the Rialto stage, and the cinema was the first to show 3D films in York. Fortunately, the Rialto was re-built within six months after the fire, reopening in November 1935. It continued to be a popular live music venue, in the sixties and seventies it became known as The Cat’s Whiskers nightclub, retaining its reputation as York’s premier music venue. In 1982, the music licence for the Rialto was not renewed, and it became a snooker centre for ten years until it was sold to the Rank Group and converted into a Mecca bingo club. In 2003, the building was demolished and the site is now a car park for the new bingo hall. Cinema-going in York has always been a popular pastime; the first moving picture to be shown in the city was of the animated variety, which shown at the Theatre Royal in December 1896. The first building dedicated to showing moving pictures in the city was the former Wesleyan Chapel, which was converted to show films in 1908. The first purpose-built cinema in York was the Electric Theatre on Fossgate – the original building still stands with its impressive faience covered exterior still intact. The theatre was owned by a Mr Waudby, and the building was taken over by local business Macdonald’s furniture shop in 1957, until early 2016. There are now plans for the site to be used as a restaurant. As well as the Rialto, three more cinemas were built between 1914 and 1921. The 1930s was a turning point in the history of cinema, with the advent of the “talkies” – these featured recorded speech in moving pictures for the first time. With this new craze, the demand for picture houses increased and four more cinemas were opened. Two of these buildings are still standing today, one of which is on Blossom Street and is still in use as a cinema, and The Clifton, which is now an independent bingo hall. The Clifton was also owned by Mr Prendergast, the father of John Barry worked and played there in the 1950s as a projectionist and with his John Barry 7. Today, there are three cinemas in York; Reel which uses the old blossom street site (and still has a large ‘Odeon’ sign clearly visible, the 1930s art deco sign still noticeable too) City Screen at the old Yorkshire Herald Press building and Vue, which is a few miles out of the city centre at Clifton Moor. It isn’t clear what caused the fire, although the highly flammable nitrate film which was in the use at the time for 35mm cine film caused a number of cinema fires – albeit mostly with the help of human error. Kodak started introducing 35mm safety film in 1949, and by 1952 all film was of this type. Fire Brigades were first conceived after the most infamous fire in British history; The Great Fire of London, 1666. The aftermath of this disaster meant that people were understandably seeking some kind of insurance against future fires, and property developer Nicholas Barbon introduced this. In order for his company to deal with the amount of claims more efficiently, he developed his own Fire Brigade to put out fires and many more companies followed suit with this idea. These companies however would only deal with fires that affected property that they insured– meaning that a lot of buildings would be left to burn. In 1833 the insurance companies of London merged to form The London Fire Engine Establishment. In 1824, the Edinburgh Fire Engine Establishment was formed. The next major change in fire fighting was the introduction of the first steam powered engines in the mid-1850s, allowing the vehicles to direct much more water onto a fire than ever before. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw many new legislations and acts introduced by the British Government in order to make the public safer from fire. These include legal regulations for staircase and exit width, the placing of fireplaces, the use of proper materials in buildings etc., and this forms the basis of Fire Safety regulations that we are familiar with today. References: Neave, David and Pevsner, Nikolaus Yorkshire: York and the East Riding, Yale University Press, 2002. Fielding, Raymond, A Technological History of Motion Pictures and Television, University of California Press, 1992. Backhouse family history The Backhouse Nursery of York 1815-1955 Burchardt, Jeremy Paradise Lost: Rural Idyll and Social Change since 1800, I.B.Tauris, 2002. Memories of the Rialto Cinema from York Press: York Press article on closing of Macdonald’s Macdonalds Furniture Store History of Cinema in York History of the Fire Service in the UK History of Fire Safety This Film is Dangerous: A Celebration of Nitrate Film |
