Bygone Newark & District DVD
“Thank you for a spectacular DVD. It has brought back so many wonderful memories to me of my childhood and teenage years in my hometown.” – Anne Russ, Big Bear Lake, California, USA.
Newark and District has its first ever Bygone DVD … thanks to a collaboration between the Newark Advertiser, as sponsors, and Andrew Blow from Blow By Blow Productions representing the Bygone Films series.
Newark and Nottinghamshire people -- and the streets, fashions, railways and vehicles of the time -- are seen in a fascinating 70 minutes of archive films, slides and photographs dating from the 1920s to the 1970s.
At a launch party for the DVD in Newark Town Hall the programme was described by the then Town Mayor, Councillor David Nixon, as “fantastic”. He added: ”I was extremely impressed with the quality of the production and surprised at the memories it invoked from my dim and distant past.”
Highlights include “A Market Town” a wartime film commissioned by the British Council from British Gaumont, reputedly to help introduce American GIs to Britain. Hundreds of Newark people and farming folk are seen on a Market Day in 1942.
Local families may see familiar faces in the Pageant of 1936 and the Sunday School Treat Days of the nineteen-fifties. Two great pre-war Newark characters, the “King and Queen of Carnival” …Norman Taylor, and John Woodall, the so-called Queen Gwendoline…. are seen once more.
There’s a tour of the town in colour in the early 1970s and historic steam trains and railway artefacts are seen at and around Northgate Station.
The programme also includes film of the enthronement of the Bishop of Southwell in 1964 and glimpses of Sutton on Trent, Averham, and Farndon.
Andrew Blow, who researched, produced, narrated and set the programme to music, was encouraged to tackle the project because his own family archive contained a short film of Newark.
“When they were small two of my Aunts and an Uncle were taken for a Sunday trip to Newark in about 1933. They met relatives already living in Newark at the Castle. Luckily some shots were filmed on the family’s 9.5 mm camera. In the event I only used about 40 seconds of it in the closing titles but in the early days it meant that I already had some Newark material under my belt and could proceed with more confidence.”
The film was strongly featured in the Newark Film Festival. Andrew thanks many contributors and helpers not least the Advertiser as sponsors, Newark Library, and Newark Town Council.
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