Crawley 1955
This is a sequence of amateur footage of Crawley new town from 1955, made by George and Rosalind Howe for the Crawley and District Community Foundation.
It's a motley collection, from carnivals to kids digging holes, model buildings to public meetings, dance classes to neon lights, football to local shops. But it's all the more fascinating because of that. There's none of the stilted theatrics of the typical new town promo film, and so you really do feel like you're getting a fairly unmediated glimpse of life in one of the first postwar new towns, where all the entertainment took place in prefabricated huts and most of the town remained unbuilt.
The footage itself is silent but a script was produced, to be read out at screenings. Happily it has survived, but although advertised is not currently available on the Screen Archive South-East page. Hopefully they'll put it back.
You can watch the film here.
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It's a motley collection, from carnivals to kids digging holes, model buildings to public meetings, dance classes to neon lights, football to local shops. But it's all the more fascinating because of that. There's none of the stilted theatrics of the typical new town promo film, and so you really do feel like you're getting a fairly unmediated glimpse of life in one of the first postwar new towns, where all the entertainment took place in prefabricated huts and most of the town remained unbuilt.
The footage itself is silent but a script was produced, to be read out at screenings. Happily it has survived, but although advertised is not currently available on the Screen Archive South-East page. Hopefully they'll put it back.
You can watch the film here.
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