Metadata
WORK ID: NEFA 22307 (Master Record)
| Title | Year | Date |
| NORTH EAST NEWS: MORPETH FLOODS | 1963 | 1963-01-01 |
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Details
Original Format: 16mm Colour: Black & White Sound: Mute Duration: 1 min 54 secs Credits: Tyne Tees Tees Television Genre: TV News |
| Summary Mute Tyne Tees Television footage of floods in the market town of Morpeth in 1963 when the River Wansbeck burst its banks and people were evacuated from their homes. |
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Description
Mute Tyne Tees Television footage of floods in the market town of Morpeth in 1963 when the River Wansbeck burst its banks and people were evacuated from their homes.
General views of flood water from the River Wansbeck flowing towards Telford Bridge and St George's Church and surging across a pedestrian bridge. The flood water has overtopped the banks of the river and reaches the houses.
A woman peers from an upstairs window above the G.R. Gibbon petrol station and garage on Bridge...
Mute Tyne Tees Television footage of floods in the market town of Morpeth in 1963 when the River Wansbeck burst its banks and people were evacuated from their homes.
General views of flood water from the River Wansbeck flowing towards Telford Bridge and St George's Church and surging across a pedestrian bridge. The flood water has overtopped the banks of the river and reaches the houses.
A woman peers from an upstairs window above the G.R. Gibbon petrol station and garage on Bridge Street.
A van tries to make its way along a flooded road. Some men and a policeman try to push a stalled car along a flooded street. A mechanic is checking the engine of a G.R. Gibbon & Sons van also stuck in the flood water. Another stalled car is pushed through the water as a crowd of Morpeth locals watch from further up the hill of the main street. More cars try to negotiate the flooded street.
Two women wade through the water as does a school boy in wellies.
A man is rescued by rowing boat. An elderly woman gets a fireman's lift as she is evacuated from her house, with a smile on her face. A neigbour watches from the doorstep of his flooded house.
Three men row a rescue dinghy along a street. A man watches from his bedroom window.
Two abandoned cars are submerged up to their windows in another part of town. A policeman and two men stand on the back of a lorry awaiting rescue by dinghy. Portrait shot of one of the men.
As flood water surges through the town, more rescues take place. A policeman is chairlifted through the water by two colleagues. Some elderly women are rescued and lifted into a van.
Stoker's shop is under water. A greenhouse is marooned in the water, which reaches up to the bow windows of a terrace of houses. The news item ends with a general view of another submerged terrace.
Context
Tyne Tees Television was a part of the 1950s and 60s measures to give regions more autonomy over television, given the fact that more people in Britain in the 1960s onwards were investing in a television. Now known as ITV news, Tyne Tees featured news and entertainment in the North-East and parts of North Yorkshire. Previously, the BBC had dominated the majority of television broadcast, focusing mainly in London. The increasing independence of regional broadcasting meant that people were able...
Tyne Tees Television was a part of the 1950s and 60s measures to give regions more autonomy over television, given the fact that more people in Britain in the 1960s onwards were investing in a television. Now known as ITV news, Tyne Tees featured news and entertainment in the North-East and parts of North Yorkshire. Previously, the BBC had dominated the majority of television broadcast, focusing mainly in London. The increasing independence of regional broadcasting meant that people were able to view their local area on a screen. This would include local news, weather, comedy and international influences such as American westerns etc.
Tyne Tees television was established in 1958 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and first broadcast in 1959. In 2019, it was the 60th anniversary since first going on air, in which ITV did a special programme detailing the timeline of Tyne tees. On the first live broadcast, the current prime minister Harold Macmillan was interviewed, cementing the success of the regional independent broadcast. The BBC had for many years been the leading authority in television and radio, thus used received pronunciation as the standard dialect of Britain. In a 2006 documentary, A History of Tyneside, it is suggested that the Tyne tees television service ‘enabled people to hear local accents and dialects’, as a way of presenting a ‘regional identity’. However, this particular footage is mute as the sound track is missing from collections. The North East Film Archive has a range of footage from Tyne Tees Television, all showing regional stories that established a ‘growing sense of identity between the station and the north-east communities it served’. Footage of news events such as the Morpeth floods wouldn’t necessarily be broadcast by BBC in London, therefore this would provide a way in which people could find out about local news. As the 1960s progressed, this became more popular as more people invested in televisions. The footage itself focuses on the Morpeth floods of 1963, which is a county town in Northumberland. The River Wansbeck floods damaged around 500 homes and businesses, causing the evacuation of its residents. Morpeth has an extensive history of flooding, with its current worst year being the floods of 2008. The 1963 floods did lead to the establishment of a flood defence scheme, but they proved useless in 2008 due to the fact that they were only designed to defend from the same amount of flooding from 1963. Due to the fact that Morpeth is an ancient market town going back to Norman Britain, houses and businesses have always been built on its flood plains. However, 1960s Britain experienced substantial flooding across the country, worsened by a lack of substantial flood defences. This evoked change made by the government and environmental agency that would provide better protection for towns built on flood plains years before. The floods that happened in 2019 and 2020 around Yorkshire have impacted a lot of people and destroyed homes and businesses. Issues that were raised in 1963 are still being raised today, like dredging and whether flood defences are able to keep up with the increasingly worse flooding that Britain is experiencing every year, in part due to climate change. Reference: 1) Morpeth floods history: http://www.coolgeography.co.uk/GCSE/AQA/Water%20on%20the%20Land/Morpeth/Morpeth.htm 2) Tyne Tees context: http://www.yorkshirefilmarchive.com/news/60-years-air-tyne-tees-tv |
