25 fascinating Bristol newsreels to enjoy in lockdown

Back in 2014, British Pathe uploaded its entire archive of 88,000 newsreel films onto YouTube. It’s an incredible historical treasure trove, but some of these videos have only been viewed a couple of hundred times. So as a special lockdown treat, we decided to spend a few hours digging out the most fascinating, illuminating and batshit-crazy ones shot in Bristol. Deliciously, these are frequently narrated in jolly, non-PC style by Mr Cholmondley-Warner and accompanied by jaunty music.

1. The Bristol Tattoo Club (1954)
Yes, it’s “one of Britain’s oddest institutions”. See that huge back tattoo you got because you thought it made you look dead modern? You were wrong. Your granddad’s probably got one.

2. “Bristol Goes Gay!” (1953)
It’s Rag Day and students chuck flour, soot and fish guts at one another in a fountain. Some things never change. Except, possibly, the fish guts.

3. “Bristol has been atom bombed!” (1951)
Blitzed post-war Castle Park is the venue for an exercise to prepare for the dropping of a nuke on Bristol. “Civil defence is the backbone of our defences,” insists the narrator bullishly, as he dismisses the unpatriotic suggestion that CD would be useless in the event of an ‘atom attack’ because we’d all be blown to crap.

4. A “wonder-road” to Avonmouth (1933)
Marvel at this fabulous new traffic artery along the Avon Gorge that will “make our country fit for modern wheels to turn in”.

5. Bananas arrive “in person” (1946)
Bristol’s Lord Mayor welcomes the arrival of the first cargo of post-WWII bananas at Avonmouth Docks. “Isn’t it lovely?” remarks posh girl selected to receive exotic phallic fruit.

6. Salute to the Red Army (1943)
Bristol salutes “its allies in arms of the Soviet Union” to celebrate Red Army Day in 1943. Let’s hear it for “the superb Russian army”. My, how times change.

7. Fixing lights to the Suspension Bridge (1953)
No namby-pamby health and safety bollocks in the 1950s! “Yes, he looks pretty high, and some of us would have to be lit up ourselves before we tackled a job like that.”

8. Bristol man makes mechanical tortoise (1951)
A Bristol boffin constructs Toby – a mechanical tortoise “with an electronic brain that functions like the human mind”. Given his magnificent effort, it seems unfair to point out that Toby looks nothing like a tortoise.

9. The Bristol Pedal Car Marathon (1966)
“You might think there’s nothing more ridiculous than the sight of grown men pushing away inside a collection of homemade pedal cars.” Indeed.

10. Inventor of the Cinematograph Honoured (1939)
Bristol’s very own William Friese-Greene invented cinema, you know. Here he’s honoured with a plaque at the Orpheus cinema. Hey – whatever happened to that plaque? We heard a story that it was found in a skip by a long-deceased local TV personality, who took it home. Do get in touch if you know of its current whereabouts.

11. Cigarette testing (1949)
“Care for a smoke?” Bristol Cigarette Factory develops a mechanical chain-smoking device. For health reasons? Nope, to test the quality of tobacco and ease the cigarette shortage.

12. Lady blacksmiths in Barrow Gurney (1931)
Two women run a blacksmiths on the Bristol Road, Barrow Gurney. What will the fairer sex get up to next?

13. The Battle of Bristol (1958)
A local derby between City and Rovers in front of a well-behaved 40,000-strong crowd, most of whom seem to be wearing hats.

14. Mentalist over Filton! (1950)
We promised you batshit-crazy, right? Our well-informed friend the internet tells us that Lesley and Sydney Piddington were a hugely popular stage and radio mentalist duo back in the 1940s and 1950s. In this bizarre clip, Lesley takes off in a ‘stratocruiser’ from Filton Airfield while her husband transmits thoughts to her telepathically from 20,000 feet below in front of a panel of judges. It’s their “most exacting test yet”. Needless to say, they were later debunked.

15. The Man of the Moment (1941)
Winston Churchill comes to town, dishes out honorary degrees at Bristol University, delivers a stirring speech and waves his hat on a stick to “the bombed people of Bristol”.

16. Churchill visits Bristol (1945)
Churchill returns to Corn Street in a horse-drawn carriage. You can see the blitzed Castle Park in the background. He then goes to a shindig with sundry civic dignitaries.

17. 9,000 Bristol schoolchildren demonstrate modern methods of physical education (1926)
Eat your heart out Leni Riefenstahl!

18. Bristol in miniature (1951)
An old geezer makes a model of 17th century Bristol. Whatever happened to it?

19. Air crash at Bristol Airport (1967)
An Aer Lingus plane appears to have crashed in a field in 1967. Pathe identifies this as Bristol Airport. Mind you, maybe Bristol Airport was a field in the late 1960s.

20. Model Battleship (1948)
A Bristol bloke makes a five-foot model of a battleship. It even fires blank shells and drops depth charges. “It’s the eighth wonder of the world to every kid in town.”

21. The War on slums (1933)
The Minister for Health arrives in town to patronise the proles, in a well-meaning kind of way, on his War on Slums tour.

22. New university opened (1925)
King George V and Queen Mary open the Wills Memorial Building. Then they trundle back down Park Street in a parade of horse-drawn carriages. Amusingly, Pathe’s notes identify the Wills building as “what looks like a cathedral”.

23. Her Maj comes to Bristol (1956)
Liz opens the brand spanking new Council House and waves to her fawning subjects

24. Concorde takes off at Filton (1969)
Concorde takes to the air – “like a prehistoric winged monster,” apparently – on a test flight piloted by Brian Trubshaw.

25. 130-tonne Colossus Takes the Air (1949)
The £12 million Bristol Brabazon “leads the way with a revolution in air travel,” insists the optimistic narrator. The world’s largest airliner was broken up for scrap four years later.

Read more: 15 Places in Bristol That Once Were Cinemas