Wards Sealed Leather Soles

From the collection of

MACE is the strategic lead organisation for screen heritage for the East and West Midlands regions. An independent charity based at University of Lincoln, MACE preserves and makes accessible a collection of more than 100,000 historic moving images representative of the diverse cultures and histories of communities throughout the heart of England from the Lincolnshire coast to the Welsh border.

Wards Sealed Leather Soles

Media Archive for Central England
Barwell
1968-01-01
Sound

The Ward's sealed leather shoe: tough enough for any building site.

The dynamic high-achieving architect shown in this 1960s television commercial may have a pipe, a glamorous Ford Mustang and a pair of brand new Ward's shoes but why does he walk over his pristine carpet straight from the muddy building site? His sealed leather soles ,from one of the East Midlands' many thriving shoe firms, may be keeping his feet dry but he's taking a big risk with that expanse of freshly laid wall-to-wall.

George Ward Ltd manufactured shoes at a factory at Barwell in Leicestershire from 1900 until 1989. George Ward (1871-1951) who founded the firm was a local councillor and the Liberal MP for Bosworth for a brief period in the 1920s.

Near Your Local Cinema

Local goods for local people! Screen advertising wasn’t all national brands and chain stores.

Purpose-built cinemas began appearing around Britain shortly before WWI, booming in popularity during the War and developing into the ‘picture palaces’ of the 1920s - when adverts jostled for space alongside newsreels before the main feature. Local businesses were quick to see the potential of a big screen and a captive audience to promote their wares.

While they didn’t have access to the budgets of the national brands, regionally-specific businesses had the benefit of that personal touch. Products and services evolved over time, but that scratchy ad for your local Indian restaurant, so integral to the cinema-going experience into the 1990s, had its roots in the booming entrepreneurship of the industry many decades before.