UKC

I found this a while back and had occasion to watch it again today.

https://youtu.be/AwHETpq4swA?si=VzoaxAk84CquULr-

It's about the 'last of the Fen Tigers', a chap called Ernie James living a traditional way of life in the fens.

I found it absolutely charming and would like to see more such old fashioned documentaries. Any recommendations? 

I have a soft spot for Jack Hargreaves documentaries. 

He tells tales of the countryside, old ways of life from what is now just beyond living memory.

My partner likes them as they put her to sleep instantly! 

https://youtu.be/VI0VTSZf348?si=Dz4n-C1Y7AXZzwxl

The last women lighthouse keepers looked after the Plover Scar lights just up the road from me. I met the son of this lady who organises the rare open days at the nearby Cockersand Abbey chapel.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1FACXNuGNKw&pp=ygUcbGlnaHRob3VzZSB3b21lbi...

You'll enjoy this tribute then I think

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtPOcSChtMs&pp=ygUZZmFzdCBzaG93IGZvbGtpbi...

I've not seen the documentaries, but I enjoyed one of the Hannah Hauxwell books.

Funnily enough, I was also thinking about them when I posted.

I have a couple that I 'inherited' a few years ago, co-authored by Hannah and Barry Cockcroft the original creator of the documentary 'Too Long a Winter'

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r8-yH4hGcng&pp=ygURdG9vIGxvbmcgYSB3aW50ZX...

I'd really recommend a visit to Hannah's old home at Baldersdale. It's a private home but the meadows are now a nature reserve because of the way Hannah farmed them without fertilisers. Walking around the reservoirs is very pleasant and you can also walk up to Goldsborough Carr for the views if not the climbing. Hannah also had family links just over the watershed in Stainmore, another place worth exploring.

I came through the meadows in the spring a few years back when running a section of the Peninne Way. It's a beautiful spot.

Goldsborough is a great wee crag although really more of a bouldering than route venue.

Funnily I inherited mine too, from someone four years younger than Hannah, albeit growing up at the other end of the country. But it never ceases to boggle my mind that that generation grew up without running water, electricity, indoor toilets, cars (for most people), education beyond the age of 14... And makes me sad that mine must be the last generation to grow up with their stories. 

I recall seeing the original documentary in the seventies. The thing that made Hannah such a remarkable person (she was one of several featured) was that she was living such a harsh and basic life in the modern age, the post WW2 world having largely passed her by. I think even my grandparents would have been astonished at her isolation and material poverty. I think if Barry Cockcroft hadn't literally walked into her life she would have starved or died of exhaustion well before reaching true 'old age'. It's good that she had a much more comfortable retirement in nearby Cotherstone (there's a blue plaque on her former cottage there).

Try “Three Salons at the Seaside” which is about ladies in Blackpool getting their hair done. Fabulous, and on iPlayer.

Metroland by John Betjeman has the poet travelling along the Metropolitan line in 1973, musing on what seems like the half-lost world of the London suburbs. Not on iPlayer but you can find it easily enough.

World at War, huge landmark early 1970s documentary on WW2 which has definitely stood the test of time. Interviews with the men and women (mostly men) who were there, from squaddies to SS commandants, Dutch housewives to Japanese commandos, with plenty of contemporary newsreel footage. On U, I just downloaded the app to my Roku player. 

She was born in 1926 right?

From the Science Museum website: 

“By the 1930s new homes in urban areas of Britain were being lit by electricity. It took time for the National Grid to roll out electricity to most of the country, but the number of homes wired up increased from 6% in 1919 to two thirds by the end of the 1930s.”

So even before Hannah Hauxwell was an adult, not having electricity at home was an untypical experience in the UK, which is a fundamentally urban society.

In 1950 a government survey found 93% of homes had piped water, even if their toilet and heating systems were rudimentary or nonexistent. (https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/mar/21/british-homes-without-bathr...) 

The majority of the interwar generation grew up with some of the basics, even if very poor by today’s standards. 

The surprising thing for me is that she was only 46 when the first film was made.

Cheers, I'll check out the first two.

I've actually been showing The World at War to classes. I'm a geography teacher but I've inherited a history class due to a colleague's long term absence.

The pupils have engaged with parts of it but I got the impression that many of the people interviewed seemed very remote to them. It's as much about the accents and language as anything else I think. 

Yes I totally get that, they do seem rather old fashioned. Perhaps that is good for kids though, after all learning that people in the past spoke differently and had different mannerisms is part of history. You can always remind them that to the cool kids of 2090 their own way of talking will seem hilariously archaic and stuffy…

I'm going to continue to show it, I just thought their response was interesting. Most of the people interviewed would have been my grandparent's or great grandparent's generations so I have a living link with those people that my 14 year old pupils don't.

I watched it originally as a kid in the seventies. Even then, it seemed to describe something from the distant past rather than recent events. Possibly the posh accent of Laurence Olivier made it seem remote from my world. The reality of the war was all around in Liverpool which had a lot of bombed buildings still standing. They were our adventure playgrounds. My Dad would talk about watching German bombers being chased by Spitfires and Hurricanes and the disappointment of finding that the 'sweets' in a bombed sweetshop were actually made of wood! I think, given the rise of populism in today's world that it's vital that people are told about the horrors it can lead to.

Don't disagree that she grew up with far less than many and I can't speak for everywhere but in rural Berkshire they definitely didn't have electricity or plumbed toilets in all homes in the 30s (at least the beginning of them). I don't know what percentage of the population was in urban versus rural areas at that time but I'm sure the experience was very different for working class people in villages and hamlets - in fact I assume more of an urban/rural divide than now. Privies were very much a thing! 

Two thirds having electricity did mean a third of homes without it. But I don’t think it’s accurate to say “a generation grew up without electricity” as that implies it was the majority experience, which it wasn’t. But no indoor toilets definitely was! It does very much seem like the divide between rural and urban life was really stark. I remember older people in the countryside still having something deferential about them, in a way that urban people definitely didn’t; thank god for the unions.

Documenting the freeminers as they get older and pass on. Nearly all gone now. Forest of Dean.

youtube.com/watch?v=uoaO-ls1fqI&

In reply to 

Grandfather. 

A rhythm of life documentary about an old man in Scandinavia. Slow tv, and just beautiful. 

Their other stuff is good too. 

https://youtu.be/bo9hXBdTfzQ?si=TU9GWkYhtK0mF5x2

Recommendation from a previous UKC thread life in a Norwegian Fjord (well done UKC)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001tv79/storyville-songs-of-earth

love this sort of thing another rhythm of life docu from Mongolia...

youtube.com/watch?v=6cWZlJkPWWA&

When I did the Pennine Way in 1978 she allowed me to camp in her field. . No facilities on offer apart from the pond but she didn't charge me anyway, refused my offer of money, in fact.