Distinguished Visitors Enjoy the Fly-Fishing at Bossington House

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.

Distinguished Visitors Enjoy the Fly-Fishing at Bossington House

Wessex Film and Sound Archive
Bossington
1953-01-01
Silent
4m

Lord Brabazon, Edwin Hubble and a former American ambassador relax at Bossington House in this delightful home movie from the Fairey family

This delightful home movie, courtesy of Sarah Jane Fairey and William Buckley, shows distinguished visitors at Bossington House - the home of the aviation pioneer Sir Charles Fairey. We see Lewis Douglas, the former American ambassador fishing for trout on the River Test. Lord Brabazon and the astronomer Edwin Hubble, in waders, also appear. All three raise a toast to the camera. The Fairey family are seen throughout the film, often playing with their Dachshund puppies.

Lewis Williams, seen fly-fishing in this film, was the former American ambassador to the UK. In 1949 he suffered an accident while fly-fishing which permanently damaged his left eye. As a result, he wore a patch, which can be seen in the film, over his injured eye for the rest of his life. Another Bossington guest who appears is Lord Brabazon, who was at one time Minister for Aviation. He was also the first Englishman to fly in a heavier-than-air machine. Astronomer Edwin Hubble, after whom the space telescope is named, completes the trio of distinguished visitors seen in this particular home movie which was made in the spring of 1953. In September of that year Hubble died of a cerebral thrombosis in California.

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.