Our impression of the Victorian and Edwardian era may have been influenced by the stilled decorum of so many portrait photographs of the period, the buttoned-up respectability of the studio pose, stiff with formality. Perhaps that’s why it’s so delightful to watch this Gaumont Graphic newsreel, which captures the exhilaration of a 100 yard zip wire ride at the mid-summer Town Moor Fair in Newcastle, known as The Hoppings, working class Edwardian women wearing the ankle length skirts of the...

Our impression of the Victorian and Edwardian era may have been influenced by the stilled decorum of so many portrait photographs of the period, the buttoned-up respectability of the studio pose, stiff with formality. Perhaps that’s why it’s so delightful to watch this Gaumont Graphic newsreel, which captures the exhilaration of a 100 yard zip wire ride at the mid-summer Town Moor Fair in Newcastle, known as The Hoppings, working class Edwardian women wearing the ankle length skirts of the era joining men and children in some well-deserved hedonistic fun.

Aerial zip-lines are not a new phenomenon. They could be considered the most basic form of flight, used as a necessity in the mountainous regions of ancient China, for instance. The fascination with flight in its varied forms has driven people’s imagination for thousands of years, featuring in Greek legend and pursued in the arts of kite flying, hot-air ballooning, the glider, and even virtually with Google map and drones. The French photographer Nadar described the sensation of ballooning in his memoirs: ”free, calm, levitating into the silent immensity of welcoming and beneficent space” presenting “an admirable spectacle…. an immense carpet without borders…’

The passion for dynamism, speed and machine technology (elevated to manifesto status by the Futurists) gathered pace in the early twentieth century, not least in the study of aerodynamics and aviation experiments. On December 17, 1903, there was a breakthrough when Wilbur and Orville Wright made the first brief flights in powered aircraft constructed to their own design. Fairgrounds and amusement parks were quick to exploit the public’s interest. Just as the motor car and railway technology found a place in fairground Switchback and rollercoaster rides, inventors such as Hiram Stevens Maxim trialled flying machine rides with the public (initially at Earls Court) and installed them at amusement parks in coastal resorts such as Blackpool in the early 1900s. His machine can still be found on the Pleasure Beach there. However, back to its simplest form, the ‘Aerial Slide’ ride on which punters slid along by means of a pulley attached to a cable above the ground had been installed as an amusement as early as 1888 at Blackpool’s Raikes Hall and Royal Palace Gardens, a second appearing on the South Shore sands around 1904. It was certainly not a novelty when riders and spectators were filmed by a newsreel cameraman at the primitive zip-wire ride installed at the Hoppings in 1912, shortly before World War One.

Ziplining is surging in popularity today as a leisure activity with an edge of vertigo, travel and sublime views thrown in. Complex cable playgrounds and trails have sprung up the world over as tourist destinations, from a bird’s eye view of old slate quarries in Wales to eco-exploration in the tree canopies of rain forests in northern Thailand. (And who can forget Boris Johnson’s zip wire misfortune in 2012?)

The Hoppings dates back to 1882 when the North of England Temperance Festival was introduced as an alcohol-free, sanitized counter-attraction to ‘Race Week’, which had taken place on the Town Moor from 1721 until 1882 when the horse-racing festival was moved back out of town to Gosforth Park. ‘Race Week’, featuring the mid-week Northumberland Plate, or ‘Pitmen’s Derby’ as it was known, was traditionally held during the annual holiday period for local mine workers. In early 1912 nearly one million miners nationwide had been on strike for a minimum wage but were back at work by summer, better wage conditions negotiated for some. Many local miners and their families will be amongst the crowds filmed at the Town Moor fair that year.

Over 160,000 people attended the first Hoppings festival, a huge success. It was reported that there were ‘no card sharpers, no gambling booths and few people under the influence of drink". Victorian era attractions included sports, games, brass bands, military shows, football and cricket matches in addition to the fair, and a five shilling prize was awarded for the best essay on the philosophy of kite flying, then a popular pastime in the area. On the Wednesday, poor children of the city were taken there for a free tea paid for by the organisers. During World War One, a smaller festival was held near Green Water Pool, Jesmond Vale, and at Jesmond Dene in 1915. From June 1916 until after the Armistice part of the Town Moor was used as an airfield, Armstrong Whitworth and Angus Sanderson testing aircraft at a northern perimeter strip. A unit of the Royal Naval Air Service is also said to have operated there. On 24 June 1919 the fair returned to the moor to celebrate Newcastle Victory Festival and the festival has continued as an annual event to this day, with just one or two problems over the years.

Preceding the emergence of the documentary, the single-shot actuality, unedited and unstructured film usually lasting less than a minute or two, brought newsworthy events to audiences from the 1890s, dating from the earliest days of commercial public screenings by the likes of The Lumière Brothers. With the first issue of the weekly Pathe's Animated Gazette in June 1910, the silent newsreel was born, using the event-based actuality as a building block. The weekly or semi-weekly newsreels consisted of unrelated news footage edited together as five to eight stories, which usually adopted a non-controversial, entertaining tone. Its success with modern audiences drawn to novelty led to rival companies Warwick Bioscope Chronicle and Gaumont Graphic also launching in 1910. Gaumont Graphic newsreels were produced until 29 December 1932. From 1913 the newsreel was edited by Alec Braid. In 1915 Alexander Victor became editor but was replaced the following year by Louis Behr, who remained in editorial control until it ceased production. In November 1929 the Gaumont Sound News had been launched, which relegated Graphic silent newsreels to smaller cinemas until its demise.

Other Gaumont Graphic newsreels at NEFA
Scenes in Jesmond Dene Race Sunday (1912)
Taken Under Protest (1912)
The HMS "Medway" (Floating Dock) Leaving the Wallsend Shipyard 5a.m. June 22nd 1912

References:

Wood, Allan W. and Bottomley, Chris, A-Z of Blackpool: Places-People-History, Amberley Publishing, 2018

Bath, Jo, Great War Britain Tyneside: Remembering 1914-18. The History Press, 2015

Easdown, Martin, Amusement Park Rides Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2012

Malkin, Fiona. “The First Newcastle Hoppings”. Discovering Heritage
https://discoveringheritage.com/2019/06/27/the-first-newcastle-hoppings/

McCouat, Philip, “The Adventures of Nadar: Photography, Ballooning, Invention and the Impressionists”. Journal of Art in Society
http://www.artinsociety.com/the-adventures-of-nadar-photography-ballooning-invention--the-impressionists.html

“Memories of The Hoppings fair on the Town Moor” The Journal. 13 June, 2011
http://www.thejournal.co.uk/news/north-east-news/memories-hoppings-fair-town-moor-4429639

“A History of the British Newsreels”, Learning on Screen
https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/newsreels/about/a-history-of-the-british-newsreels/

http://hoppingsfunfairs.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/PDF-2-Timeline-1882-to-2012.pdf