This is one of several films made by Rotherham filmmaker Charles Chislett about camps ran by the Church Pastoral Aid Society (CPAS). Chislett was a skilled amateur filmmaker from Rotherham who, over a period spanning the years 1930 to 1967, made a considerable number of exceptionally well made films. The Charles Chislett Film Collection held at the YFA consists of nearly 100 films, about half directly relating to Yorkshire, the rest mainly holiday films from around the world. Chislett made...

This is one of several films made by Rotherham filmmaker Charles Chislett about camps ran by the Church Pastoral Aid Society (CPAS). Chislett was a skilled amateur filmmaker from Rotherham who, over a period spanning the years 1930 to 1967, made a considerable number of exceptionally well made films. The Charles Chislett Film Collection held at the YFA consists of nearly 100 films, about half directly relating to Yorkshire, the rest mainly holiday films from around the world. Chislett made many types of films: documentary, fiction, and family portraits. Chislett was an active member of the CPAS and made many films for them. At around the time that this film was made he also filmed the work of the Christian homeless charity in St George's Crypt, Leeds, in 1949, and New Lives for Old (1951); and of a student at London University College of Divinity, Powerhouse (1948). Another quite different film, also commissioned by the CPAS, is Men of Steel (1948) – there is more on Charles Chislett and the CPAS in the Context for his other films. 

 

As well making this film Chislett also made similar films of camps at Burstow and Pirbright, Surrey Days in two parts, one featuring boys the other girls (1949), and the Lake District, They Discover The Hills, again in two parts, one girls, one boys(1951). Closer to home he also made a film CPAS Camp At Slaidburn (1952), of a girl’s camp. At the time the film was made Slaidburn was a part of Yorkshire, and still sometimes gets located within the Yorkshire Dales, although in 1974 it got switched few miles over the border into Lancashire, and outside the area of the National Park.  

 

The Dales film was made in 1949, the same year as he filmed in Surrey. The CPAS would normally commission films from Chislett, and both before and after the film he would liaise with the CPAS as to the content of the film. Detailed arrangements of the films, and who were involved, can be found in the Chislett correspondence held in the YFA.  Once the films were returned from Kodak the Society lost little time in organising showings of the film, as the films were considered very important in promoting the Society. The many letters that the CPAS sent to Chislett thanking him for his work and urging him to continue making films for them testify to how important they regarded these films. The CPAS would cover Chislett’s expenses in making the films – £30 for Slaidburn – but Chislett gave of his own free time.

 

The boys’ camp featured in Dale Days With CPAS isjust outside the village of Kettlewell, Wharfedale in North Yorkshire. Shortly after this film was made it became part of the Yorkshire Dales National Park which was established in 1954. As can be seen in the film, it is a beautiful place for walking, which the Dales, and Wharfedale in particular, have become famous for. The limestone geology makes for pleasant walking territory – the boys probably walk over Gate Close Scar – and this has inspired walkers going back to the poetry of William Wordsworth and paintings by Joseph Turner. Walking in the countryside, pedestrianism, became a very important aspect of the romantic movement of the 1790s.

 

Getting out of the smoke and grime of the city into the countryside was not a new idea: throughout the nineteenth century a rambling movement grew – leading to the formation of the Rambling Association in 1935. But this was largely a middle class phenomenon as the working class lacked both the means and the time. It was really only in the aftermath of the First World War that this began to change, with groups seeking to open up the countryside to poorer people. This led to the famous Kinder Scout trespass, and the follow up one at Winnats Pass, where 10,000 ramblers assembled, both in 1932. This movement was given greater impetus immediately after the Second World War, especially with the Holidays with Pay Act of 1938, and the Countryside Act of 1949, giving powers to the new National Parks commission to set up parks and long-distance walks. This gave rise to the Pennine Way, the inspiration of Tom Stephenson – later Secretary of the Rambler’s Association – although this wasn’t officially opened until 1965.

 

The idea of getting youth into the countryside had already been pioneered by the Youth Hostel Association which was established in Great Britain in 1930 – early films of its activities, dating back to 1933, were broadcast on BBC Four in May 2009.

 

Yet although Kettlewell became, like most of the villages in the Dales, a place where one could escape from the grind of industry, it wasn’t always so. Through the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Kettlewell was a lead mining village, with some of the mines also producing silver ore. In his book on the Yorkshire Dales, Arthur Raistrick describes just how grim this work could be. It also produced cotton, using a cotton-spinning water wheel on the River Wharfe, for the cotton mills of Lancashire.  In an earlier book, Arthur Raistrick, also gives a detailed history of how Kettlewell became governed by locals holding the land on trust called Trust Lords (Raistrick, 1967 – see also the Context for Dale Days).  Nearer to our own times it was the location for the film Calendar Girls, under the name of ‘Knapley’. 

 

The CPAS was founded in 1836 as a response to the rapid growth in industrial towns and cities and the threat that this posed to church membership.  It became part of a wider evangelical movement that emerged in the mid nineteenth century. They were trying to combat the decline that Matthew Arnold described in his poem of 1867, Dover Beach, in which all he can hear now of the ‘Sea of Faith’ is the ‘melancholy, long, withdrawing roar’.  

 

The CPAS was pioneering in that it issued grants, in opposition to High Churchmen, to employ lay people as well as ordained. One of the first to benefit from this was the Rev Patrick Bronte, Rector of Haworth, the father of the famous sister novelists. He was able to employ Rev Arthur Nicholls as curate, who later married Charlotte Bronte, earning the CPAS a mention on the first page of her novel Shirley. By the 1860s the CPAS was supporting five hundred curates. However, evangelical preachers were often lampooned in novels of the day, such as Mrs Jellyby in Bleak House.

 

Although an evangelical organisation, still very much active today, the CPAS arose at a time when there were a number of Christian social reformers wishing to improve the conditions of the rapidly growing poor: the two impulses coming together, especially in relation to children. One of those involved in founding the CPAS was Lord Shaftesbury, who was heavily influential in the passing of progressive legislation at the time: such as the Factory Acts of 1847 and 1853, the Coal Mines Act of 1842, and the Lunacy Act of 1845.  Also, and more relevant to this film, with the Ragged Schools Union, of which he was chairman. Founded in 1844, this set up Charity Schools providing free education, often including food and clothing. 

 

The CPAS camps, as seen in this film, follow in the footsteps of this movement of bringing together education, help in the provision of basic necessities and the teaching of the Gospel. The camps were seen then, as they still are today, as also part of the process of training young people to become Christian leaders. This aspect of the camps is stressed in the sub-titles of the films, written by Chislett, and more evident in the films of the camps in Surrey, especially at Pirbright Lodge, which catered for young adults, mostly from a more affluent background.

 

But perhaps the aspect of the camps that comes across most from the films is the contrast they set up between life in ‘streets without trees’, and the outdoor life of the countryside.  Already in the nineteenth century YMCAs had countryside walking groups.  One side of this is to allow children growing up in crowded urban streets an opportunity to experience living for a while in the country, and simply have a good time. This is clearly evident in this film, and the contrast from their inner city life for the children lucky enough to go to the camps must have been great. 

 

On the other hand, the camps had a definite moral and religious purpose. In promoting this through camps and the outdoor life there is a connection with the Boy Scout Movement. Here too there is a practical side in learning how to cook and fend for oneself in the wild. And they share the idea of doing this as part of a disciplined community. Both of these aspects, of self-reliance and camaraderie, are seen as helping the character formation of children – see the film New Horizons for a portrayal of the Scouting Movement as being morally uplifting. 

 

Of course, with the CPAS camps the teaching of a Christian message is much more explicit. What is striking about the films, especially of the boys from poor areas, is that despite their high spirits there is evident respectfulness towards their elders, and the Christian Services, of a kind that is difficult to imagine today with children from similar backgrounds. There has been a steady process of decline in membership of the Anglican Church, and of church going, from the 1840s through to the present. However, in the aftermath of the Second World War there was a resurgence in church membership and ceremonies, with renewed evangelical crusades to turn the tide: the evangelist Billy Graham attracted two million to a series of events in London in 1954. The CPAS were a part of this fractured evangelical movement – David Bebbington, in his book Evangelicism in Modern Britain (1989), puts them on the conservative wing. Several films held with the YFA give evidence of this movement, showing huge Whit processions in Rotherham and Leeds in the 1940s and 50s. These films give testimony to the saying that the 1950s were ‘the last Victorian decade’ – see for example Rotherham Whit Processions, filmed by Charles Chislett in 1948. 

 

In fact one historian, Callum Brown in his book The Death of Christian Britain (2001), argues that the decisive break came in the 1960s, with the changing attitudes and lifestyle of women in particular. Prior to then individual identities were still essentially shaped by a Christian culture. From then on, except for a small minority, this completely broke down, and the lives of most people were no longer shaped by a Christian society and Christian rituals.

 

Today the CPAS has many more similar activities, now called Ventures and Falcon Camps, which take place throughout the country. These have moved on considerably though from the kind of world presented in Chislett’s films. The emphasis now, as well as being on having a great time, is on ensuring that religion is not felt to be ‘in your face’, and that the leaders, often fresh out of university, are felt to be like friends.

 

References

 

The YFA holds a collection of documents relating to the life and work of Charles Chislett. This includes many letters relating to his films and other matters, working notes on some of the films, film order forms from Kodak, some old editions of ‘Church and People’ and other memorabilia. There is also an obituary which gives a fuller account of Chislett’s work, with a list of the charities and other activities that Chislett was involved in. These can be viewed at the YFA. Rotherham Archives also holds a Collection of material on Chislett (Archives & Local Studies Service, Central Library, Walker Place, Rotherham, S65 1JH). 

David Bebbington, Evangelicism in Modern Britain, Routledge, London, 1989.

Callum Brown, The Death of Christian Britain, Routledge, London, 2001.

Robin Jarvis, Romantic Writing and Pedestrian Travel, Macmillan Press, Houndmills, 1997.

Arthur Raistrick, Old Yorkshire Dales, David and Charles, Newton Abbot, 1967.

Arthur Raistrick, Arthur Raistrick’s Yorkshire Dales, compiled by David Joy, Dalesman Books, Clapham, Lancashire, 1991.

Colin Speakman, Walking in the Yorkshire Dales, Robert Hall, London, 1982.

CPAS website