Preston Egg Rolling (c.1901)

Preston
1901
Silent
2m

Easter Monday festivities in Avenham Park, Preston.

Mitchell and Kenyon filmed several local traditions, including this Easter custom in Preston's Avenham Park, which dates centuries and is still observed today. One of the showmen who commissioned the film doffs his top hat to the camera before gamely joining in. It's a communal occasion and a time to show off - one mother displays a baby nearly smothered in its swaddling clothes.

The movement for public parks peaked in the late Victorian and Edwardian years, fuelled by a belief that the mingling of the classes would be good for social cohesion, and by the need to provide the working classes with outdoor spaces away from the sinful pleasures of the tavern or music hall. Eleven parks can be seen among the films in the Mitchell and Kenyon collection, each of them an arena for physical exercise and civic pride.

The Victorian World

Vivid portraits of everyday Victorian life, thanks to the first generation of filmmakers to take to Britain’s streets.

Some of the most fascinating of early films are those which are content to watch the world go by. Numerous filmmakers parked their cameras on street corners, in parks, on seaside promenades or outside workplaces or churches to capture fleeting moments of everyday life.

In their own day, these films held a mirror up to Victorian society. Today, these images of our ancestors – relaxed, smiling and laughing, gazing at us through the camera lens - are a gift of moving history. The offer us extraordinary insights into a lost world, more vivid than any still photograph or written account.