This film is part of the Fisher Collection of mainly nitrate films, which was sold to the Bundesfilmarchiv some time around 1975, and was later acquired by the Imperial War Museum. (The Bundesfilmarchiv suffered a horrendous fire in 1988, losing 1,900 reels of film). Two other films from this Collection that the YFA have are Bradford City v Newcastle United (1911), made by Pathe Freres, and, also on YFA Online, The West Riding Of Yorkshire, made some time around the First World War.  It isn’t...

This film is part of the Fisher Collection of mainly nitrate films, which was sold to the Bundesfilmarchiv some time around 1975, and was later acquired by the Imperial War Museum. (The Bundesfilmarchiv suffered a horrendous fire in 1988, losing 1,900 reels of film). Two other films from this Collection that the YFA have are Bradford City v Newcastle United (1911), made by Pathe Freres, and, also on YFA Online, The West Riding Of Yorkshire, made some time around the First World War.  It isn’t known who made the film or with certainty in which year Bradford Under Snow was filmed: there were a few years in the decade of the 1910s when there was snowfall.  Good candidates include 1913 when heavy snow fell in Yorkshire on the 5th December, and at the end of the February 1916 there was 30 cm of snow lying in many places– see the excellent site on British Weather based at Dundee University, References. 

 

But there is very strong evidence from the Bradford Daily Telegraph for Monday January 13th and Tuesday 14th, 1913, which reports a snow storm in Yorkshire over the weekend of January 11/12th, and the work of clearing the streets the week after: “From an early hour this morning the Corporation had the work of clearance in hand, some 800 of the regular staff being assisted by 350 casual labourers in the work, which was expeditiously carried out under the superintendence of Mr Inger, thousands of tons of snow being tipped into the beck. […] Today there were 175 horses and carts engaged in the work.”

 

Most early films, pre 1910, are what are called actuality films; that is, films of local people in street scenes, or coming out of factories or football matches, which would often be shown the same day that they were shot.  These films, however, would often be made to be shown the same evening as a way of making money: flyers would be given out for the showing to those on the film.  This film, showing local scenes after a heavy snowfall, seems to be something of a hybrid between this and a newsreel which would feature events of wider interest. 

 

Perhaps the greatest interest of the film is the horse drawn snow ploughs and carts and the way that the snow is disposed of, seemingly down sewerage system.  Horse drawn snow ploughs were not unusual and continued for some time – see the catalogue record for the film The Snow Plough (1936) held by the Scottish Screen Archive (References).  For an account of using horse drawn snow ploughs from not too far away, from the early 1920s when there was some severe winters, and when this film may well have been made, see the Ambleside Oral Archive (under Winter) – there is also a picture of a snow plough in use near Kirkbymoorside in 1938-9 in Hartley, References).  

 

Given the recent heavy snowfall, and the problems this has caused, it is intriguing to see this alternative to salt and grit. Of course, most snow in urban environments will end up the same way, down the drains, although usually only once it has melted, not before then. Those who were around during the winter of 1962/3 – when for three months, between Boxing Day 1962 and March 1963, much of England was continuously under snow – will remember it simply being piled high at the side of the roads, causing a hazard for pedestrians, cyclists and motorists alike (as testified by personal experience).

 

Bradford has changed greatly since this film was made, though these changes didn’t come until the late 1950s and 1960s – see the Context for Billy Liar on Location (1962). However, Lister Park has managed to remain remarkably unchanged in the intervening years since this film. Although the boating house has been transformed, boating continues on the Park Lake – stories of the Park from the 1940s and 1950s can be found in the book by the aptly named Derek Lister. The same is true of the boathouse at Saltaire, which later became a pub and, at the time of writing (March 2010), is being restored and refurbished – see also the Context for Easter on Shipley Glen 1912.

 

Parks had become tokens of civic pride in the Victorian era, with towns and cities competing to have the best. Bradford was early in on this when it opened Peel Park in 1853 – see the Context for Bradford Silver Jubilation (1935). The land that Lister Park stands on was granted to the Lister family, who already owned much of Manningham, by Henry VIII. It was sold by Samuel Cunliffe Lister, owner of Manningham Mills, to the Bradford Corporation in 1870 on condition that it would be used as a public park. The whole of the Park is now the Grade II, as are many of its individual monuments and artefacts, including Cartwright Hall. This was completed in 1903, with a new art gallery and museum, replacing the demolished Manningham Hall which made way for it.

 

Cartwright Hall, named after inventor of the power loom the Rev. Dr. Edmund Cartwright, was the central focus for the 1904 Bradford Industrial Exhibition, opened by the Prince and Princess of Wales (King George V and Queen Mary), which was held in the Park.  The film shows the monumental neo-Baroque style gates on North Park Road, complementing the architecture of Cartwright Hall that they stand in front of. Both the Hall and the Gates were designed by the Italian influenced Simpson and Allen.

 

Lister Park, also known as Manningham Park, had a facelift between 1998 and 2002 thanks to Heritage Lottery funds.  This included the construction of the North of England’s first Mughal garden, built in the tradition of a type of garden found in Pakistan and northern India. In 2006 it was voted the Best Park in Britain. For a full account of the Park, its history and new developments see the Bradford City Council document Lister Park (References).

 

The Victorians, or at least those who pulled the strings in local authorities, liked to put up statues of their local big industrialists and benefactors. Bradford was no exception, hence the one of William Edward Forster, at that time in Forster Square, but moved in 1967 to the Merchants’ Quarter.  These statues now tend to be taken for granted, and the public usually only gets a very truncated version of the lifework of these elevated people.  The Forster statue was sculpted by James Harvard Thomas – some of whose other work can be found in the Cartwright Hall Art Gallery in Lister Park – and unveiled in 1890 at the princely cost of £30,000 (famously an ungainly man, he also has a statue in Victoria Embankment Gardens in London). 

 

The statue to Richard Oastler on North Gate in Bradford, unveiled in 1969, goes somewhat against the grain in representing a reformer who wasn’t also wealthy (from a wealthy family, in fact he was bankrupted, twice, on the second occasion as a result of his campaigning).  An interesting character, a radical Christian Tory, he was certainly a genuine fighter for improving children’s conditions, but there is much else to his story. This is true also of Forster: potted biographies unfortunately tend to gloss any complexity – see the entries on both of these in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.  For an update on current sites see the Bradford NGLF sculpture trail (References).

 

Forster was a woollen manufacturer and philanthropist, brought up and educated as a Quaker, at Grove House School in Tottenham, before being excommunicated for marrying Jane Martha, eldest daughter of Thomas Arnold, who was Anglican.  He was the Liberal MP for Bradford from 1962 until his death in 1886.   Although he was progressive on many issues, as Quakers usually were, whilst Chief Secretary for Ireland he imprisoned Parnell and fought a running battle with the Land League, who campaigned for landless tenants in Ireland. As with Oastler, Forster was a complex political figure, often at loggerheads with his cabinet colleagues – again, see the entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

 

The recent cold winters still have some way to go before they become as severe as they were during the so-called ‘little ice age’, especially the 17th and 19th centuries. It was in the 17th century that daily meteorological records started, and these show that during the winter 1739/40, between November 1739 and May 1740, London had 39 snowy days, and that February 1947 was the coldest February on record in many parts of the UK.  In fact there have been many large swings in climate over the last thousand years (a change in average of just one or two centigrade is sufficient to count as such).  This fact feeds the skeptics of climate change, though the factors behind these changes are factored in by the scientists who monitor this. 

 

It has become a cliché that Britain is worse at coping with heavy snow than other countries – see Why can't the UK deal with snow? (References). Some have put this down to its irregularity, or to an unwillingness to bear the costs, others to the simple fact that most people like to be able to have the odd day off work, that it helps to enliven our lives, and that it diverts us from more depressing news.

 

(with special thanks to Sarah Powell of Bradford Local Studies for finding the reports in the Bradford Daily Telegraph)

 

References

 

Marie Hartley and Joan Ingilby, Yorkshire Album: Photographs of everyday life 1900-1950, J M Dent & Sones, London, 1988.

Derek Lister, Bradford Born and Bred, Bank House Books, 2008.

Roger Smither (editor), this film is Dangerous: a celebration of nitrate film, FIAF, 2002.

Bradford City Council document Lister Park

Bradford NGLF sculpture trail

British Weather at Dundee University

The Snow Plough (1936)

Ambleside Oral Archive

Timon Singh, Why can't the UK deal with snow?

William Edward Forster in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Richard Oastler in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography