Coronation Celebrations Leeds was made by a husband and wife film team of filmmakers from Leeds, Betty and Cyril Ramsden. They began making films in 1945 and continued into the mid 1960s. During this time they made over 50 films, mostly in high quality 16mm film and in colour. Their collection of films was donated to the YFA in the spring of 2006.  It is an outstanding collection: by virtue of its remarkable technical quality, composition and broad subject matter. As well as family and...

Coronation Celebrations Leeds was made by a husband and wife film team of filmmakers from Leeds, Betty and Cyril Ramsden. They began making films in 1945 and continued into the mid 1960s. During this time they made over 50 films, mostly in high quality 16mm film and in colour. Their collection of films was donated to the YFA in the spring of 2006.  It is an outstanding collection: by virtue of its remarkable technical quality, composition and broad subject matter. As well as family and holiday films, there are a wide range of documentary type films and some fictional films done with a light humour. Their film collection was made the subject of a BBC/Open University television programme, Nation on Film, made in 2006, narrated by Sir David Jason.

 

Cyril worked as a dentist, and was the original owner of the dental practice now known as Far Headingley Dental Care.   He can be seen in the film coming out in his red shirt and attaching a Union Jack to the aerial of his Wolsely.  Betty was a teacher before working full time doing the administrative work for the dentistry practice. They both made films, together and individually. Although not professional filmmakers they took their hobby very seriously, and won many certificates for their films from the Leeds Camera Club, which they helped found (coming out of the Leeds Camera Club, which was founded originally in 1893, and now named Leeds Movie Makers). Several of their films are on YFA Online, including Craftsman on Kilburn (1948), Coxwold Gymkhana and Children’s Day Leeds, both made in 1951, and Humber Highway (1956) – see the Context for this latter for more on the Ramsdens.

 

This film is typical of the Ramsden’s films in looking behind the scenes, and shot in beautiful colour.  The film was made at the same time as one made by Leeds Camera Club, Leeds Salutes A Queen – Coronation, produced for the City Council, and filmed by John (Jack) Eley. It is unclear why the Ramsden’s made this film alongside the other, given that they were both members of Leeds Camera Club; perhaps with the slightly more senior Jack Eley given charge to produce the City Council one they felt they wanted to make their own personal film of the occasion. Some of the two films overlap, showing the same things from the same vantage points, though at different times. The Jack Eley film is much longer, more professional and features all aspects of the event, including the organising committee. This film, however, shows more of the actual physical preparations with the workmen putting the decorations up, something that often gets neglected; and perhaps they felt that this was missing from the official film.  

 

The YFA also has a film made of the occasion made by Pathe News, as well as other film showing the celebrations of the coronation: a Charles Chislett film of London at the time, and film of the celebrations in Wakefield and Hull. In November 2009 a programme on Channel 4 showed a recently unearthed film by the BFI of the coronation in London, made by Arthur Wooster and Bob Angell who filmed the Queen using two cameras simultaneously at different angles before blending the footage together into a single picture.

 

The Ramsden film gives a glimpse of Leeds nearly 60 years ago, and we can see some of the many changes there have been since then, like those to Millennium Square where the Town Hall stands. Some of the shops seen have also now gone. Schofields was founded by Bradford born Snowden Schofield in 1901 – before acquiring a row of shops in the Victoria Arcade between 1902 and 1910, and Nos.5 and 6 bought so that the store now occupied six shops in a row. After the war, in 1947, Snowden Schofield acquired the whole of the Victoria Arcade. After his death in 1949 his son Peter took over and eventually, in 1984, sold the store to Clayform Properties Ltd.  The store closed in 1987, and was temporarily housed in the Woolworth's store on Briggate – a longer history of the store and what it was like is provided by Cherry Robinson (References). 

 

The Lewis’s store, on the north side of the Upperhead Row, between Woodhouse Lane and new Briggate, was opened in 1932 with 100,000 people visiting on its first day. This then had three additional floors and was re-opened in 1939.  The store closed in 1991 to be taken over by Owen and Owen of Liverpool in 1991, whose stores, in turn, were bought by Allders in 1996. The Yorkshire Post has subsequently got a new building on Wellington Street. The Grand theatre, opened in 1878, was taken over by Leeds City Council in 1973, and in 1977 became the home of Opera North. In 1982 the interior was refurbished and restored to its Victorian Gothic splendour.

References

 

Cherry Robinson, ‘The Glory that was Schofield’s’, Down Your Way, Issue 148, April 2010.

Discovering Leeds