Southampton’s MP Films his Family and Friends

From the collection of

Wessex Film and Sound Archive is based in Winchester. Providing the opportunity to see and hear history, the archive contains nearly 40,000 film, video and sound recordings relating to Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, ranging from late Victorian times to the present day. It includes both amateur and professional material, local newsreels, military and maritime subjects, as well as footage produced by individuals, businesses and organisations.

Southampton’s MP Films his Family and Friends

Wessex Film and Sound Archive
Hampshire
1931-01-01
Silent
10m

William Craven-Ellis records the antics of family and friends in his garden, on the beach and in and around Southampton

William Craven-Ellis' joyful family film, made with his daughter Mrs D Campbell, shows jollity amongst the well-to-do of the 1930s. We see attempts to 'Loop-a-Roo', beach scenes at Branksome Chine followed by tea in the family beach hut. After a trip to the Isle of Wight family members enjoy their first trip by air on the ill-fated Cloud of Iona. More scenes of the family in the garden with their children and dogs follow after which we say bon voyage to Sir Enoch Hill and family.

William Craven-Ellis was the Conservative MP for Southampton from 1931 until the General Election of 1945. His home-movie, made with his daughter, Mrs D Campbell, captures some interesting scenes, machines and people. The amphibious aircraft in which his family took their first flight, was a Saro A19 Cloud, registered G-ABXW Cloud of Iona. This aircraft crashed in mysterious circumstances off Jersey on the night of 31 July 1936 killing all ten on board. The home-movie also features Sir Enoch Hill and members of his family as they prepare to set sail for the United States on board a liner, presumably at Southampton. Sir Enoch was at one time president and general manager of the Halifax Building Society.

Ordinary and Extraordinary Lives

Home movies give us unique permission to step inside the lives of people who we've never met and never will.

Home movies are always acutely personal - in subject and perspective - and most were never intended for audiences beyond family and close friends. But even so, these private films share generously with the uninitiated stranger. Watching home movies transports us into other lives and other times, where the actions of people we never knew, in places we've never visited, resonate with our own memories. The home movies of the stars, the rich and the famous, the royals - see past the familiar faces and they're much like anyone's: intimate film portraits of loved people and places, colourful moving picture albums of experience and emotion. These simple point-and-shoot home movies seem to connect with the past in a profoundly authentic way - their images unfiltered by filmmaking technique and artifice.