Once Upon a Time in the West
by Julie Ballards and Judith Green: 9th December
Report by Richard Appleby
This programme of film and video material about the West End of Newcastle was brought together by Search in collaboration with Tyneside Cinema. Search is a community based charity that works with older people in the West End and the first film was entitled “West End aged poors outing to Benton” and showed older people from the West End on a picnic day trip to Benton in 1923. Eighty year olds were shown racing to pop balloons, competing in a tug of war and dancing, jigging and skipping.
Armstrong’s engineering factories (later Vickers) dominated employment in the West End for many decades. The Elswick works opened in 1847 and we were shown a film of 20,000 employees entering the works around the turn of the century with 20,000 faces all looking at the camera which was an important part of the Vickers’ marketing at the time. A later film, which was made by the management depicted workers inside Vickers and it was particularly interesting to note the lack of Health and Safety in those days e.g men in top hats and frock coats with no protective clothing stirring boiling molten metal.
Other short films included a political meeting to save the Elswick works; Benwell shopping centre in 1970 which has since been demolished; several waves of housing clearances to be replaced by blocks of flats which lasted barely twenty years; the demolition of the old Scotswood suspension bridge built in 1830, including an interview with a man who stood on the top of one of the towers and the opening of the new one, and highlights of an amateur film of the centenary of the Blaydon Races in 1962 sponsored by Northern Goldsmiths. Finally we saw a clever animated film of West End ladies knitting and views of Benwell village.
All in all, a very interesting set of films of the old West End in a good venue at the Northern Rugby Club.
City and County
February 2010
