Metadata
WORK ID: YFA 6476 (Master Record)
| Title | Year | Date |
| CRASTER KIPPERS | 1964 | 1964-01-01 |
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Details
Original Format: 16mm Colour: Colour Sound: Mute Duration: 4 mins 31 secs Credits: FilmmakerGeoffrey Willey Genre: Amateur Subject: Seaside Industry |
| Summary Made by filmmaker Geoffrey Willey, this film looks at the work of the famous producer of Craster kippers, L. Robson and Sons. It shows the traditional process of turning herring into the well-known delicacy. |
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Description
Made by filmmaker Geoffrey Willey, this film looks at the work of the famous producer of Craster kippers, L. Robson and Sons. It shows the traditional process of turning herring into the well-known delicacy.
The film opens on waves as the sea breaks on a rocky shore. Next is a road sign which points the way to Littlemill Station and Craster.
A view of Craster village show fishing boats on a shallow slipway near a road. There is a tradesman’s sign attached to a stone wall which reads, ‘L....
Made by filmmaker Geoffrey Willey, this film looks at the work of the famous producer of Craster kippers, L. Robson and Sons. It shows the traditional process of turning herring into the well-known delicacy.
The film opens on waves as the sea breaks on a rocky shore. Next is a road sign which points the way to Littlemill Station and Craster.
A view of Craster village show fishing boats on a shallow slipway near a road. There is a tradesman’s sign attached to a stone wall which reads, ‘L. Robson & Sons, Fish Merchants, Craster, Kippers a Speciality.’
In the fish merchants, a worker with a wooden rake sorts out herring on a special bench, which also has cubes of ice amongst the fish to keep the produce cool.
Herring are taking from a wooden box and placed by hand on special clamps attached to a rotating metal wheel fixed in a horizontal position near the operator.
The fish go down a chute and into a basket. On the special cold bench seen earlier the fish are sliced open and gutted.
A worker takes a basket of fish and plunges it into a tank of water, turning it to wash the contents. He then transfers the contents to another basket.
The workman continues by depositing gutted fish from baskets into a tank of water. He turns one or two fish over in the tank. On a nearby indicator which looks like a clock with one hand, he turns the hand to the number five.
Using a round disc, with holes in it which acts like a sieve he takes some fish out of a large tank and puts them into a small wooden tub.
In another part of the factory women hang the gutted fish on horizontal wooden poles, then put them onto special wooden frames over burning wood chips in the smoke house.
On the roof of the smoke house the excess smoke dissipates through special vents. The workers remove the poles with freshly smoked kippers fastened to them. The kippers are removed and packed into wooden boxes.
The boxes are weighed and some are taken to the nearby shop to be sold. A woman in the shop wraps kippers in newspaper for some customers.
Two women chat outside the shop, one of them cradles two wrapped parcels of kippers. In the factory a man places some kippers into a small wooden gift box, and places a lid on it securing it with nails.
A number of these boxed kippers are wrapped in brown paper with address labels and are placed into a Royal Mail parcel post sack. A postman collects the sack from factory office and loads it onto his van.
The film ends with the van leaving the premises of L. Robson and Sons.
Context
This film is by Geoffrey Willey, who was a photographer and filmmaker active in Yorkshire and the North of England throughout his life. Willey had a particularly close relationship with the Ryedale Folk museum, from whom this film was acquired along with a few others which document different aspects of Yorkshire life filmed between the 1930s to the 1960s.
Willey was born in Honley, West Yorkshire in 1911 and developed an interest in photography and film as a child after receiving a camera for...
This film is by Geoffrey Willey, who was a photographer and filmmaker active in Yorkshire and the North of England throughout his life. Willey had a particularly close relationship with the Ryedale Folk museum, from whom this film was acquired along with a few others which document different aspects of Yorkshire life filmed between the 1930s to the 1960s.
Willey was born in Honley, West Yorkshire in 1911 and developed an interest in photography and film as a child after receiving a camera for his 11th birthday. Willey remained an active in filmmaking until his death in 2015 at 103. Willey’s films focused on local life, capturing events such as the Scarborough Skipping day. His is a unique collection which documents local life through the ages using a variety of film formats that show the technological advancements made in film throughout his time as a filmmaker and photographer. This film focuses on the production of Craster Kippers by L. Robson and Sons located in the fishing village of Craster on the Northumberland coast. The business began trading in Craster in 1906 and is still producing kippers today. The business is based at ‘Robson’s Smokehouse’, seen in the film, which was built in 1856 by the Craster family and was purchased by the Robsons after their founder James William Robson moved to Craster in around 1890. The stock date of the film suggests the date of this footage is from around 1964. The footage shows the production of kippers from herring using traditional methods. The means the herring is split by hand, still done by ‘herring girls’ in this period. The smoking process of kippers shown in the film has gone mostly unchanged since the business started production in 1906. The herring are split, then placed in a brine solution of salt and water before they are smoked with a blend of white wood shavings and oak sawdust for between 14 and 16 hours to produce Kippers. The film also shows kippers being sent by post, showing the collection of kippers by a Morris J. Type Royal Mail postal van. This aspect of the business started in around 1939 and allowed Craster Kippers to be enjoyed by those not local to the village. Craster Kippers are still available by postal delivery today and remain one of the most recognised and popular kippers produced in the UK. The business is still active in Craster and is the now the only remaining active smokehouse in Craster. The business still continues to use the same traditional methods for the production of kippers, though the splitting of the herring is now done by a machine rather than by hand. The herring used for the production of Craster Kippers originally used herring landed in the village; however, the modern production of Craster Kippers relies on herring from Norway in order to source herring with a high enough oil content to produce the quality for which the kippers are famous. References – For further information on Geoffrey Willey – Geoffrey Willey, ‘Ryedale in my Heart’ Chris Bond, ‘The 85-year career of Yorkshire photographer goes on display at Ryedale Folk Museum’ Yorkshire Post (24th February 2020) For more on Craster Kippers and L. Robson and Sons – https://www.kipper.co.uk/history/ |
