LINCOLNSHIRE - A CENTURY ON FILM 1
The Lincolnshire Film Archive has launched a major new series of DVDs showing life and work in the historic county throughout the 20th Century. Drawing on its extensive motion picture collection, much of it never before made available for home viewing, the film archive has set out to present a wide-ranging picture of a hundred years of Lincolnshire life. Town and country, work and play, wealth and poverty, peace and war, youth and age. You’ll find them all here, preserved on archive motion picture film.

Volume One of this exciting new series, written and narrated by Alan Stennett, covers the century’s early years, with film dating back to as early as 1901. Grimsby trawlermen bringing home their catch, hats and dresses to die for – 1904 style, vintage motor cars and horse-drawn traffic in Lincoln; quarrymen working entirely by hand, but proud of their steam-driven lorry; industry that led the world with products designed and built in Lincolnshire, like the first caterpillar tracked vehicles and pioneering packaging machinery. There are royal visits, coronation and Empire Day celebrations; Great War recruitment and early aviation, Isaac Newton’s bicentenary, early Lincolnshire Shows, all the fun of the fair and seaside holidays; a children’s party in the 1920s, and bathing the baby in a small tin tub.

And it’s true what people say about the old days; things really were different then. The policemen were actually taller, holiday-makers wore their best suits on the beach, and an aeroplane used to be something you could pick up and carry.
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LINCOLNSHIRE - A CENTURY ON FILM 2
Volume Two covers the decade leading up to the Second World War. With the availability of smaller, easy to use cine cameras, many more people were now recording their lives on film, and judging from their pictures, some of them now in colour, Lincolnshire life seems to have been largely unaffected by the political and economic problems of the 1930s. Agriculture and the Grimbsy fishing industry were clearly thriving, with fish now being frozen for retail sale; and RAF planes flour-bombing a canvas tank give little hint of the horrors soon to come.

In a world where a travelling scissor grinder was still plying his trade, and gravel was laboriously extracted by hand, a Jubilee and Coronation were certain to draw huge crowds, buy traditional pleasures such as Scout Camps, garden fetes and donkey rides at Skegness, Cleethorpes or Mablethorpe were now giving way to novelties like the recently opened Butlins Holiday Camp, and motor racing and Cadwell Park.

Lincoln features prominently, of course, with its buildings old and new, its endless traffic hold ups at level crossings, and its workforce thronging the streets on bicycles. Then there's travel by steam train, motor bus, trolleybus, and various river craft including the Humber ferry, plus floods at Stamford, and the reappearance of the famous Trent aegir. Watch out too for Billy Butlin, Gracie Fields, the Dagenham Girl Pipers and a future Prime Minister, the nine year old Margaret Roberts.
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LINCOLNSHIRE - A CENTURY ON FILM 3
Volume Three in the series covers the war years. In spite of the difficulties and wartime shortages, local film makers managed to produce a detailed record of this dramatic period in Lincolnshire’s history. Drawing on their film material, this DVD covers the period from the last desperate months of peace, right through to the Victory celebrations of 1945.

Among the memorable scenes featured in this DVD are RAF Lancasters operating out of Lincolnshire bomber bases; Air Raid Precaution (ARP) and incendiary bomb exercises; War Weapons Week & aluminium collection for Spitfires; the sand-bagging of buildings and the construction of air raid shelters; arrival of evacuees from the cities; rationing of food, fuel and other essential supplies, the British Restaurant and TocH organisations in action; and the Home Guard recruitment, training and final disbandment. Also features extracts from the film ‘Country Town’ which shows how the countryside was doing its bit for the War effort.
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The Lincolnshire Film Archive produce a range of general interest videos using the motion picture film currently preserved in the archive. Topics covered range from farming and fairgrounds to video compilations about people and events in specific Lincolnshire towns. The titles so far include:

• Lincolnshire - A Century on Film 1*
• Lincolnshire - A Century on Film 2*
• Lincolnshire - A Century on Film 3*
• Take Post TA Gunners*
• Farming on Film 1930-60*
• Farming on Film 1955-79*
• Fenland Farming 1955*
• Bomber County - The Home Front*
• Excavation on Film*
• Seems Like Yesterday
• Spilsby 1938-41*
• South Holland Looks Back
• Louth Looks Back
• Grantham Looks Back
• Boston Looks Back
• Fairgrounds On Film 1915-70*
• 40 Floral Years*
• Springfields the Original*
• Skegness Then & Now*
• Mud, Dykes & Draglines*

* Co-produced with Primetime Video Productions

For more details of all the above videos and how to obtain them, visit the Archive Video pages of Primetime Video's Website.