Metadata
WORK ID: YFA 4391 (Master Record)
| Title | Year | Date |
| THE ETERNAL CITY - YORK | 1960 | 1960-01-01 |
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Details
Original Format: 16mm Colour: Colour Sound: Silent Duration: 18 mins 53 secs Subject: Religion Fashions Architecture |
| Summary This film shows different places and events in the city of York. Many of York's historic landmarks are included as well as scenes of the Mystery Plays, the Regatta, and unique footage of the open-air market. |
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Description
This film shows different places and events in the city of York. Many of York's historic landmarks are included as well as scenes of the Mystery Plays, the Regatta, and unique footage of the open-air market.
Intertitle: "Our Heritage Films"
"The Eternal City"
"York"
Two women sit fairly far away on a bench with their backs to the camera. Then the camera looks at a bridge going into York. Scaffolding is visible on one of the towers of the Minster.
There is...
This film shows different places and events in the city of York. Many of York's historic landmarks are included as well as scenes of the Mystery Plays, the Regatta, and unique footage of the open-air market.
Intertitle: "Our Heritage Films"
"The Eternal City"
"York"
Two women sit fairly far away on a bench with their backs to the camera. Then the camera looks at a bridge going into York. Scaffolding is visible on one of the towers of the Minster.
There is a flower display in a lawn shaped to resemble a dove. It has a message about peace, but this is difficult to read due to the angle of the shot. A woman can be seen walking along a wall in the background. There are more shots of flowers and then the statue of George Leeman.
Intertitle: "Guildhall and Lendal Bridge".
The camera focuses on the bridge, showing boats passing on the water and people walking across.
Intertitle: "St. Mary's Abbey in the Museum Gardens".
There are shots of the ruined abbey. Two men walk through, the elder of the two wearing a suit and round glasses and the younger wearing a woollen jumper. There are peacocks roaming the grounds, and one stands on a window ledge.
Intertitle: "City Pigeons in King Square".
An East Asian family sit on a bench. A child stands closer to the camera, watching the birds. Another child, in a red polka dot dress, bends down near the pigeons and looks at the camera. There is a shot looking towards the minster, which can be seen over the roof tops.
Intertitle: "Saturday Market".
There are stalls selling things like vegetables, fruit and flowers. It is very busy, and this footage contains various good shots of the fashions of the time.
Intertitle: "York's shortest street, formally a whipping place for felons".
A street sign reads: "Whip Ma Whop Ma Gate". There is a shop, "Welburn's" further down.
Intertitle: "The Shambles" as old as the Doomsday Book".
There is a shot of an antiques shop with the sign: "Decorative Pottery & Porcelain. Old Glass. Silver Plate. Furniture. Clocks. Brassware. Curios. Bric - a - Brac. Antiques by F.C. Chalk". Then, when the street is shown, there are signs for "Cox Roof Repairs" and "Capstan".
Intertitle: "Stonegate, containing many fine medieval and timbered houses".
More signs include: "Fine Arts Gift House", "Corsets", "Bell's Dealers in Old Glass, China, Pewter, Brass and Plate. Est. 1846" [stone underneath gives the building completion date as 1434], "Tudor House Caf?". There is a painted gargoyle resembling a devil carved into one of the structures .There are also windows full of ornaments and figurines for sale.
Intertitle: "'Mickelgate Bar' the only complete Barbican gateway in England".
There are then shots of this structure.
Intertitle: "Bootham Bar".
Bootham Bar is also shown.
Intertitle: "The historic city walls".
People walk along the walls, and flowers are shown beneath on grassy areas.
Intertitle: "And in springtime".
There are areas absolutely full of daffodils. The York Minster can be seen in the distance behind them.
Intertitle: "Pleasure craft on the River Ouse".
Boats go at a leisurely pace down the river. There are swans. A woman stands on one of the boats holding onto the mast.
Intertitle: "Like other cities, York holds its regattas".
Two competing row boats speed down the river. People stand on the side to watch. There are oars arranged in a line propped up along a slope at the side of the river.
Intertitle: "York's two rivers, the Ouse and Foss, still carry merchandise from the sea by barge".
There is a barge by the riverside near Skeldergate Bridge. A man attaches a hook onto piles of goods and a crane lifts them onto land.
Intertitle: "Clifford's Tower and Castle Museum".
People walk up and down the steps to the castle, atop a hill. Then, outside the museum, people sit on the grass or on walls. A clock shows the time 5.10.
Intertitle: "York Minster, one of the superb masterpieces of architecture in England".
There are shots of the architecture and of the stained glass windows.
Intertitle: "Street Criers during festival celebrations".
A woman dressed up, wearing a Puritan style hat, holds a wicker basket. There are several other people dressed in period clothes. They all walk the streets with baskets, presumably selling something.
Intertitle: "Street performance of religious play".
Crowds gather at the side of the street. A man on a white horse with a cape and crown makes his way through. Policemen stand in front. Next there is a horse drawn cart with actors standing on top. This acts as a stage and is the traditional way in which the Mystery Plays are presented.
Intertitle: "The annual Thanksgiving service and parade".
There are soldiers and a marching band parading down the street. An important military man in formal attire steps out of a large car, followed by a woman who could be his wife, and walks up the steps into the minster.
Intertitle: "The End".
Context
This film is one of over sixty films that were made by amateur filmmaker Fred Brackenbury that have been donated to the Archive by his daughter Aline Nowell. Fred was a member of the Harrogate Cine Club, and made his films between the late 1940s to the mid 1960s. Some of the films, as with this one, he made under the title of ‘A Heritage film’. There are some family holiday films in the Collection, but the majority are made in and around Harrogate, often featuring floral displays, and...
This film is one of over sixty films that were made by amateur filmmaker Fred Brackenbury that have been donated to the Archive by his daughter Aline Nowell. Fred was a member of the Harrogate Cine Club, and made his films between the late 1940s to the mid 1960s. Some of the films, as with this one, he made under the title of ‘A Heritage film’. There are some family holiday films in the Collection, but the majority are made in and around Harrogate, often featuring floral displays, and often in collaboration with other members of the Cine Club. Among the films are several of May Queen Pageants in the 1950s in the local Harrogate schools of Woodlands Primary and Wedderburn Infants. There is also film of the 1953 coronation celebrations which has recently also just gone live online, Coronation Processions - Harrogate and London.
York most probably got the name of ‘Eternal City’ after Rome; as it was, after all, the Romans who founded York (Eboracum) in AD 71, the year after the subjugation of Jerusalem allowed the Roman Emperor Vespasian to turn his attention to the north west. It certainly isn’t as old as Rome, which can trace its origins a good 700 years earlier. But in this respect York is no different from any of the other historic cities of England which all developed as such under Roman rule. The film is one of many made by amateur filmmakers highlighting the historical features of York, going back to York Circa 1920. Following from this there are films that provide a chronicle of York decade by decade, among which are: York - Glories of England (1929), York 1936, Pot Pourri York (1939), York (1950), Sunny Day in York (1954), History of York (1974)and Newsreel 1984 (York Cine Club). A surprising number of them have the same view from the City Walls on Station Road looking towards the Minster in the distance. The film of the Mystery Plays clearly dates The Eternal City in part as 1960, but towards the end of the film, the military officers arriving at the Minster seem to be greeted by Donald Coggan, who wasn’t appointed Archbishop of York until 1961. For more on the Mystery Plays see York Mystery Plays 1973. But not many of these other films show the statue of George Leeman, across the road from York railway station. Leeman followed in the footsteps of the other major nineteenth century figure in York, the railway financier (and dodgy dealer) George Hudson, and become Chairman of the North Eastern Railway Company, as well as three times Lord Mayor of York and twice a Liberal MP. Leeman was very active in reforming local government politics, yet, although a member of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, he certainly wasn’t especially progressive. Perhaps his best legacy was to improve the sanitation of the city, which has been cited as the reason the public raised the money for this statue by local sculptor George Walker Milburn, and erected in 1885, three years after Leeman’s death – a commendation not forthcoming for Hudson (although he does have a street named after him), something that Alf Peacock considers to be fitting (References). What the films show is how York has increasingly become a destination for tourists since the end of the last war. Even at the time that this film was made in 1960, it is noticeable that there are far fewer cars and pedestrians than there are today. Part of this is due to an increase in the population of York from 144,585 in 1961 to 202,400 at the last census in 2011. Hardly any of this increase is due to immigration, with York having under half the national average for Asian and Black populations. The textile industry made West Yorkshire a much more attractive destination – the industrial revolution mainly by-passed York. What has drawn people to York is the prospect of working in the tourist industry, which employs some 23,000 workers. In 2011 York attracted over 7.1 million visitors a year, spending over £443 million. In 1950 there were just enough beds for 1,300 visitors, climbing to 1,900 in 1979 and more recently averaging over 10,000. The increase in cars and of foreign tourists are factors in this increase, but also the National Railway Museum – now the largest single tourist destination, outstripping even the Minster – wasn’t opened until 1975, whilst the Jorvik Centre – with the third largest number of visitors (leaving aside the Shambles) – didn’t open until 1984. Along with the increase in tourism has come the decline in industry. It won’t be possible any more to see a barge on the River Ouse being unloaded with what looks like newsprint (to supply the Foss-side print works of local newspapers). Yet not much else of what is seen in the film has changed much. The thirteenth century ruins of St Mary’s Benedictine Abbey – which had been the wealthiest and most influential Benedictine house in northern England – has been in its present state since the dissolution of the Monasteries between 1536 and 1539, affecting 15 Abbeys in Yorkshire – among them being the abbeys of Bolton, Byland, Fountains, Rievaulx, Whitby and Jervaulx Abbey, as well as Bridlington Priory. The initial round of closures in the summer of 1536 included Clementhorpe Nunnery and Holy Trinity Priory in Micklegate, York. This resulted in a rebellion, the Pilgrimage Of Grace, which started in Beverley on 8th October under the leadership of William Stapulton, six days after a similar rising in Lincolnshire. The revolt also spread to other Yorkshire towns, with the dominant leader being the lawyer and landowner Robert Aske. Aske and Stapulton met on 13th October on Weighton Hill, near Market Weighton, where Aske called their protest a pilgrimage. Aske garnered 5,000 horsemen (other estimates are higher), who rode on York where they posted an order on the Minster, on the 16th/17th October, restoring banished monks and nuns to their religious houses. If the detailed account given by Bush is correct, then some popular accounts of the rising (including the Wikipedia entry as of 28/05/12) are not entirely reliable: not least failing to do justice to the breadth of support it gathered across Yorkshire – more so from the commons than the gentry (References). After Henry VIII broke a pledge of royal pardon, made on his behalf by the Duke of Norfolk, the rebels were rounded up and executed, among them Robert Aske, who was hanged from Clifford’s Tower on July 12 1537. It was only after this that most of the monasteries and other religious houses were closed and ransacked, including the Gilbertine Priory in Fishergate, the Benedictine Priory of Holy Trinity, Black Friars' house (Dominicans), the abbey of the Augustinian Friars at York, where a library of 646 volumes was destroyed, and with the Benedictine Abbey of St Mary's falling in late 1539. Since that time York has managed to retain much of its historic buildings, although not without the need for extensive repairs, for example with the city walls, and not without much controversy and conflict – for a good account see Ronald Willis (References). Modern developments since 1965 have not gone without criticism. The architectural historian John Harvey, writing in 1975, warned that any inner ring road might “transform a genuine historic atmosphere into that of a preserved museum.” (References, p 35) There are some who think that this danger has already come to pass; but in fact a lot has been done to preserve York since the making of this film, and amazingly the Minster is still, by some margin, the tallest building in the city. References Michael Bush, The pilgrimage of grace: a study of the rebel armies of October 1536, Manchester University Press, 1996. John Harvey, York, B T Batsford, London, 1975. Alf Peacock, ‘Leeman and York Politics’, in Charles Feinstein (ed.), York 1831-1981, The Ebor Press, York, 1981. Ronald Willis, The Illustrated Portrait of York, Robert Hale, Clerkenwell, London, 1988. Key Facts On Tourism In York (as at January 2009) Visit York: Facts and Figures York at the close of the Middle Ages The Half-Arsed City: An Alternative Guide To York |
