Metadata
WORK ID: YFA 3244 (Master Record)
Title | Year | Date |
GLEDHILL COLLECTION 5 | c.1940 | 1937-01-01 |
Details
Original Format: 16mm Colour: Black & White / Colour Sound: Silent Duration: 11 mins 50 secs |
Summary This is a film which documents events in the Halifax area including winter scenes and Heroes on Parade after Dunkirk at the Gleddings (now a Prep school.) |
Description
This is a film which documents events in the Halifax area including winter scenes and Heroes on Parade after Dunkirk at the Gleddings (now a Prep school.)
Title - Organ Pipes
Opening with wintry scenes in Halifax, the organ pipes to which the title refers are large icicles which hang off of many of the buildings. The town itself is also covered in snow.
Title - Wintry Blockade
The trees are completely covered with snow as well as other parts of the surrounding town and countryside.
Title...
This is a film which documents events in the Halifax area including winter scenes and Heroes on Parade after Dunkirk at the Gleddings (now a Prep school.)
Title - Organ Pipes
Opening with wintry scenes in Halifax, the organ pipes to which the title refers are large icicles which hang off of many of the buildings. The town itself is also covered in snow.
Title - Wintry Blockade
The trees are completely covered with snow as well as other parts of the surrounding town and countryside.
Title - January - May - Colour
June - July - Changed Conditions
As the snow has now melted away, the trees can be seen in full bloom.
Sign - Keep away - wasps nest!
The nest as well as the wasps swarming around can be seen.
Sign - The Combe
There is a honey comb with bees all over and around it. Something white is thrown on the comb which makes the bees scatter.
Title - cyanide + wasp = death (QED)
There are now dead wasps and a few boys pumping water into the area with a hand pump hose.
Title - Worry not, we're wettin' t'wasps
There is more with the boys with the hand pump hose in the garden.
Title - After the "wetting" at Dunkirk (a toy ship goes across the title card)
Title - Heroes on Parade - (by permission)
There are army boys lined up (possibly members of the home army?) who are performing many different types of marching drills. They parade around at the Gleddings, which is currently a preparatory school in Halifax. They perform a few different exercises and are inspected by the superior officer as they are saluting.
Title - Rifle Drill
Small groups of the soldiers take part in the rifle drill.
Title - Handball
The men play a game structured in the same manner as football, but instead they are using their hands.
Title - Open 'H'air cut
Some of the men get a hair cut outside.
Title - Up in the morning early
The men are doing jumping jacks and then line up for breakfast.
Title - YMCA (change to B&W)
The men can be seen lined up and eating breakfast.
Title - The End
Context
Beginning with icicles and scenes of the large snowfall of January 1940 (the coldest for 45 years), this film moves on to show evacuees from Dunkirk billeting in Halifax and helping to train new recruits, still somewhat rusty with their rifle drill. It shows the typical personalities that were characteristic of that irreverent age, with the army humour, also shown by the filmmaker, that gave rise to the likes of Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe.
This film was probably made by a young (c.19...
Beginning with icicles and scenes of the large snowfall of January 1940 (the coldest for 45 years), this film moves on to show evacuees from Dunkirk billeting in Halifax and helping to train new recruits, still somewhat rusty with their rifle drill. It shows the typical personalities that were characteristic of that irreverent age, with the army humour, also shown by the filmmaker, that gave rise to the likes of Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe.
This film was probably made by a young (c.19 yrs old) Gordon Gledhill, later of Halifax Cine Club. His father, Arthur Henry Gledhill, a former Mayor of Halifax and governing director of Gledhill-Brook Time Recorders Ltd., was the first President of the Cine Club and also made many films in the 1930s and ‘40s (he built his own cinema at home). Gordon was the grandson of George H Gledhill, who set up the company in 1886, and the last family member of the company (sold off in 1964). During the War the company produced various military items, such as sun compasses for desert operations and map measurers. The place of billeting, The Gleddings, passed from Lady Fisher-Smith to be used for army training during the war. |