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These four segments shot by the Lancashire-based film pioneers James Kenyon
and Sagar Mitchell illuminate Blackpool's striking Victoria Pier, which opened
in 1893. Considered more upmarket than its neighbours, the North Pier and the
Central Pier, it came to be known, inevitably, as the South Pier.
Travel had grown cheaper by the Edwardian era, and technological developments
like the electric tramway, seen here, offered new and easier ways for tourists
to reach the pier. The film shows holidaymakers promenading in their Sunday best
and sun shades, and repeatedly circling past the camera to make sure their faces
are captured on what was still a very novel technology.
The beginning of the century saw a reduction in working hours, which led to
an explosive growth in the leisure industry. This filmic record highlights the
swelling visitors but also proves that the young, the old, men, women and
children took full advantage of what the Victoria Pier had to offer. Blackpool,
the commercial centre of the Lancashire seaside resorts, was an attractive and
affordable holiday destination for families with a little more time on their
hands.
Above all, Blackpool was a place of entertainment, and one of the more
distinctive sequences in these films features a band playing violins and
trumpets, followed by the Flockton Fosters Entertainers, who performed live on
stage three times daily to an expectant crowd. In line with their usual
practice, Mitchell and Kenyon's films would have been screened as part of a
longer film programme and shown repeatedly at the Blackpool Hippodrome the
following day.
Rebecca Vick
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Mitchell and Kenyon 200 (1:32)
