Bolton Football 2 (c.1900)

Burnden Park, Bolton
1900
Silent

Spectral images of a football match at Bolton's Burnden Park.

Much of the Mitchell and Kenyon collection was found in remarkable condition for its age, but this film wasn't so lucky. The cycle track, just visible around the pitch, reveals that this was a Bolton home game, filmed before the summer of 1905 when the track was removed. A build-up of static electricity in the camera has left lightning effects on the picture, adding to the film's haunted quality.

Spectral images of a football match at Bolton's Burnden Park.

Edwardian Football

The beautiful game, Edwardian style, in some of the earliest ever film of League, international and amateur football

For Blackburn-based filmmakers Mitchell & Kenyon, the attraction of football was at least as much the swelling crowds - who they hoped to lure to paid screenings - as the game itself. With only a few hundred feet of film on hand and far less mobile cameras than today's, their cameramen could only hope to sample the action on the pitch; catching a goal was a rare bonus.

The crowds' passion and energy are almost spectacle enough, but these films also survive as priceless football history - preserving, among other trophies, the earliest known footage of Manchester Utd and probably the first 'international' games captured on film.