Panoramic View of the Morecambe Sea Front (1901)

Morecambe
1901
Silent
2m

Crystal-clear views of town, sands, sea, tourists and locals at the Lancashire resort.

With their summer afternoon clarity, Mitchell and Kenyon's images of Morecambe remain gorgeously fresh. The respectable pleasures of the white-collar resort are communicated by static shots (men, women and children on the promenade) and others filmed from a horse-drawn tram: onlookers are encouraged to wave, while excited boys race the carriage. The seaside shimmers in the background.

The film ends on a wave across the street and a view of the poster advertising the winter gardens show at which this film, commissioned and exhibited by the flamboyant showman AD Thomas, was first screened. It subsequently travelled at least as far as Yorkshire (there's evidence of it being screened in Bradford).

Mitchell & Kenyon's Edwardian Britain

A miraculous journey around Britain at the dawn of the 20th Century, courtesy of filmmakers Mitchell and Kenyon.

Welcome to a lost world. These amazing films, lost for at least 80 years, offer something close to time travel. Miraculously discovered in a Blackburn basement in 1994, the films give us stunning images of ordinary life in late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain.

The films' rediscovery rewrote the story of early film. Blackburn-based duo Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon, we now know, belonged to a thriving local, non-fiction filmmaking scene. Touring northern and central England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, they made films for fairground operators and other showmen to screen to paying audiences, offering punters the chance to 'see yourself as others see you'. Factory workers, churchgoers and schoolchildren, sportsmen and spectators - these relaxed Edwardians laugh, grin and point at the camera. Film brings them all back to life, as no painting or photograph ever could.

Digitisation of this collection was funded by The National Lottery.