This film was made by the Rev C B Underwood the vicar at St Mary’s Church in the village of Carleton in Craven. The YFA has 14 films made by the Rev. Underwood between 1969 and 1975. The films all focus on local events and people, especially the Carleton Sports Day and Gala, and activities at the local primary school. Put together the films provide a rich view of village life in the early 1970s: what the films lack in professional quality they more than make up for by their intimate...

This film was made by the Rev C B Underwood the vicar at St Mary’s Church in the village of Carleton in Craven. The YFA has 14 films made by the Rev. Underwood between 1969 and 1975. The films all focus on local events and people, especially the Carleton Sports Day and Gala, and activities at the local primary school. Put together the films provide a rich view of village life in the early 1970s: what the films lack in professional quality they more than make up for by their intimate character. The films perhaps reveal the Rev. Underwood’s greater interest in people, than in places or events. An interesting contrast would be the film made by Mr G. E. Gainsford in 1963, Sheffield Lakeland, again showing a Yorkshire village, Bradfield, over a period of a year with the church as its centre. In 2008 two showings of the films in the local hall attracted large audiences, many of whom either recognised themselves or the many characters that are featured.

 

Brian Underwood was the rector in Carleton from 1963 until 1969. Brian was inspired to make films by his father who also made some family films from the 1930s when they lived in North Cheshire. His father passed on his cine camera to Brian who started out making 9.5 mm films, although the costs of film proved a strain whilst Brian was a curate.  However, Brian moved on to Super 8mm when it became available in the 1960s, using a Bell and Howell cine camera. It became a lifelong hobby that has remained with Brian through into his retirement, moving on to video and joining the Tewkesbury Cine Club (now Video Club) when he was vicar at Twyning in Gloucestershire between 1976 and 1988.   Whilst at Carleton Brian filmed on his own, although there was a local cine club at Keighley.

 

As the title of this film suggests, the film brings together a number of unrelated aspects of village life over the period of about a year. They begin with the closing of the local co-op, something that unfortunately has happened in many other towns and villages.   The Co-op has a special relation to Yorkshire, because although it was founded in Rochdale in Lancashire, in 1844, it developed by bringing together many similar enterprises, especially from Yorkshire. It grew in a period when working class self-organisation and principles of cooperation were rapidly developing. Initially it started in part as a way of obtaining cheaper, and unadulterated, food.  Although the Co-op has expanded greatly since then, village shops have been in steady decline since the early 1970s. Figures are not easy to come by, but the  Countryside Agency has calculated that 4,000 village shops closed between 1991 and 1997, and a Commission for Rural Communities Report of 2007 states that: ‘[the loss has been] between 300 and 500 village shops each year. Between 1965 and 1990, 15% of small rural settlements experienced the loss of their last remaining shop. It is estimated that 70% of villages in the UK have no local shop’ (see References). The fate of the combined village shop and post office has become a much publicised battle.

 

Other local institutions evident in the film have fared better. The Women’s Institute has been around in Britain since 1915, with one of its aims specifically to revitalise village communities – even then – as well as encourage women to produce food during the war. The activities of raising money and putting on entertainment, seen in the film, have been characteristic of the Women’s Institute throughout its history.  Although the WI has had a stuffy image – being gently satirized in the BBC comedy Jam and Jerusalem – it has been involved in many progressive campaigns, including at present the Care Not Custody campaign.  In 1974 it was at its height with over 9,300 branches, although Carleton no longer has a branch.

 

So too is Carleton Primary School still going strong. This is an endowed Church of England Voluntary Aided School, whereby all but 10% of building and repair costs are met by public funds, but where the Church has a stronger say in worship, religious instruction and staff appointments.  Schools in Britain were overwhelmingly run by the Church of England before State schools were introduced following the establishment of Local Education Authorities in the 1902 Education Act, and the election of the Liberal Party in 1905. Today some 25% of primary schools are voluntary aided Church of England schools. 

 

Given the Christian ethos of the school and the filmmaker, it is not surprising that filming children putting on a performance of the nativity is typical of the films of Rev. Brian Underwood. Yet what was once a relatively uncontroversial aspect of school life has in recent years become more open to questioning. The many sided issues of the teaching of religion in state schools, and of faith based schools, has led to increasing debates (see Gardner and Stern, Further Information). Some feel that Christianity is too dominant in a multi-cultural society, others that Christianity is under threat, whilst still others, like the campaign Accord for example, campaign for state-funded schools to be open to all religions or beliefs, “without unduly influencing beliefs before children are mature enough to make up their own minds”.  
The present Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, places the issues in a broad perspective: “A Christian institution is not necessarily one where everyone is drawn into the same patterns of moral life or discipline, but it is one where people are constantly being exposed to the challenge of living in such a way that justice and mercy and mutuality become visible.” (see References)


 

References

 

Marie Parker-Jenkins et al, in good faith: Schools, Religion and Public Funding, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2005.

Commission for Rural Communities

The Economic Significance of Post Offices Combined with a Village Shop

Rowan Williams: The Mission of the Anglican University in our Present Age

Accord

Ekklesia the independent think-tank examining the role of religion in public life

 

Further Information

 

Roy Gardner et al (eds), Faith schools: Consensus or Conflict, Routledge, London, 2005.

Julian Stern, Schools and Religion: Imagining the Real, Continuum, London, 2007