Coxwold Gymkhana 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,...

Coxwold Gymkhana 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. 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 Cine Club – as this one did for Betty – which they helped found (coming out of the Leeds Camera Club, which was founded originally in 1893, and now named Leeds Movie Makers). More on the Ramsdens can be found in the Context for two other films they have made on YFA Online, Humber Highway (1956) and Craftsman of Kilburn (1948).

 

The Ramsdens used to regularly stay at the Fauconberg Arms in Coxwold after the war, where they got to become friends with Mr and Mrs Dawson who run the pub. They had first gone up to the area during the war cycling. As a result of this they made many films of Coxwold after the war and into the 1950s. The diary that Cyril kept gives an account of the pub at that time, and of the occasion they were put in charge. It was through this that they come to make this film, as Wally Dawson asked them, together with their friends Mary Day and Joan, if they would run the beer tent for the Gymkhana. This they agreed to do and Cyril relates how that from 2 pm to about 9 pm on the day of the event they opened some 600 bottles of beer, and sold out on all spirits (Betty can be seen serving in the film). After this they then helped out behind the bar at the pub until closing time. They used to put on film shows at the pub, and this film would almost certainly have been among those shown.

 

By and large the local gymkhanas had been stopped during the duration of the war, but were now again in full flow – although the YFA has film of one at Sheriff Hutton Castle whilst the war was on and at Odsal Stadium, Bradford, from 1943. The YFA has a number of films featuring gymkhanas, mainly dating from the 1930s and 1940s, and of many other similar events, although may not be named as such.  Ramsdens had themselves filmed an earlier gymkhana in Coxwold in 1949.

 

The origins of gymkhanas reveals something of the fascinating history of the British in India.  They probably originate in India, as games of horsemanship, and were taken over by the British cavalry in the first half of the nineteenth century as a means to hone their horse riding skill, and thence to England.   Beginning as displays of athletics and equestrian events, they branched out in the twentieth century to include motoring events, as in this film with motorcycles, performing tests of riding or driving skill.  This was the hightide of British motorcycles, but unfortunately they move rather fast in the film for identification: an educated guess is that a BSA A10 Golden Flash, a Norton ES2 and a 1947 Velocette MSS are seen setting off.

 

There are slightly different accounts of the origins of the word ‘gymkhana’, all relating it originally from the Hindu word for a ball court.  The American Heritage Dictionary states that it derives from Hindi ge d for ‘ball’ (of Dravidian origin) and house (from Persian kh na); the Merriam Webster Dictionary has it as being probably a modification of Hindi g?dkhana & Urdu gendkhana, literally, ball court.  This is backed up by the Oxford Dictionary which traces its first use in writing as by Major John Trotter for an event in Rurki in the Punjab, now in Pakistan after the division of India in 1948. In India gymkhana is commonly used to refer to a gym, or social and sporting club, as it is in other Asian countries including Malaysia, Thailand, Burma and Singapore, as well as East Africa.

 

Horse riding for pleasure and sport of course goes way back in history, with different riding techniques and games spreading from country to country across Europe, Asia and the Middle East. That Khana, or Khaneh, meaning home, originates from the old Persians have spread across Briatian, and now internationally.  The word Ahana, is an indication of this: Persia in particular was renown for its horsemanship. Indeed polo made its way into Britain originally from Persia and China via India in the 1850s. Here we see an example of the cross fertilization that characterises the history of the relation between India and Britain: England gave India cricket, while India gave England polo. From here gymkhana

 

The village website notes that the oldest recorded spelling of the village is Cuhu-walda – Cuhu is a personal name and walda is a wood – in Norman times becoming Cucwald: cuc is to crow as a cock.  In 2008 Coxwold was listed in the ten best villages to live in Britain, and the second most expensive, on the 5 TV programme Property List (see Yorkshire Post, 12th June 2008). But perhaps it is best known for being the home of Laurence Sterne (1713-68), author of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (among much else), who was a vicar of St Michael’s Church in Coxwold.   Sterne had already been a vicar in Sutton-in-the-Forest, eight miles north of York, before moving to Coxwold in 1760 where he wrote Tristram Shandy. 

 

Sterne’s comic novel has rightly been credited with having been one of the first to subvert narrative conventions, and Sterne’s star rose high during the highpoint of postmodernism.  His former house, Shandy Hall, can be seen in one of the Ramsden’s other films, Coxwold Canvas (1948). It has subsequently become a museum of Laurence Sterne, and the centre of much of Coxwold’s cultural life. Unfortunately gymkhanas no longer take place in Coxwold, although they still do at Borrowby, north of Thirsk.

 

References

 

Charles Chenevix Trench, A History of Horsemanship, Longman, 1970.

A collection of material relating to the Ramsden’s is held with the YFA, including small extracts from Cyril Ramsden’s diary (courtesy of Dr Jonathan Fear, nephew of the Ramsdens).

The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989.

Yorkshire Post, 12th June 2008

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/gymkhana

http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/gymkhana

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gymkhana

http://www.coxwoldvillage.co.uk/