Discovery and Restoration of The Collection
In 1994 during demolition work in what had been Mercers toy shop in Northgate, Blackburn, two workmen were clearing out the basement when they found three metal drums like milk churns, and looked inside to see hundreds of small spools of film. On their way to the Lethbridges Scrap Metal Processors was Magic Moments Video which did cine to video transfers, and the workmen dragged in a churn and asked the proprietor, Nigel Garth Gregory, if the films were of any value.
Knowing of local businessman and historian Peter Worden's interest in cinematography, Gregory phoned Worden and offered to arrange for the drums to be delivered to him. Following delivery Worden examined the rolls and realised that the film stock was highly volatile and stored the rolls in a chest freezer in his garage until their transfer to the British Film Institute in July 2000.
Worden, along with another local historian, Robin Whalley, researched the films and provided an invaluable introduction into the firm and their films in an article published as "Forgotten Firm" in Film History, volume 10, number 1, 1998 (ISBN 1-86462-031-5).
The Peter Worden Collection of Mitchell & Kenyon Films has now been preserved by staff at British Film Institute's National Film and Television Archive, carefully storing the dangerously inflammable 35 mm nitrate negatives in rooms that are constructed with water tanks suspended above a glass ceiling so that if the stock should ignite, the resulting fire will cause the glass ceiling to fail and enable the suspended tanks of water to extinguish the fire. Painstaking film preservation techniques were used to produce remarkably clean and scratch-free positives, adjusting the speed to smooth out the variations in these hand-cranked films. The results are fresh and natural, offering an unparalleled social record of early 20th century British life.
The University of Sheffield's National Fairground Archive and the British Film Institute were awarded a three-year research grant by the Arts and Humanities Research Board to research, catalogue, identify and contextualise the 800 plus films. This has culminated in a collection of essays The Lost World of Mitchell and Kenyon: Edwardian Britain on Film, edited by Vanessa Toulmin, Simon Popple and Patrick Russell and published by the BFI in October 2004 (ISBN 1-84457-046-0, paperback, ISBN 1-84457-047-9, hardback) and over 15 articles. The major catalogue and interpretation of the Collection has been published by the British Film Institute titled Electric Edwardians: The Story of the Mitchell & Kenyon Collection (London: BFI, 2006), by Vanessa Toulmin, it contains over 431 stills from the collection, an array of handbills and posters from the National Fairground Archive and 100,000 words of text and filmographic references. Also available is a companion DVD titled The Electric Edwardians with two hours of highlights from the Collection with extras on the archiving of the films, an essay by film historian Tom Gunning and an interview with the lead researcher on the Collection, Vanessa Toulmin. Forthcoming film releases include Mitchell & Kenyon in Ireland and Edwardian Sport on Film (both to be released in late spring 2007)
A prime-time three-part series The Lost World of Mitchell & Kenyon was shown on the BBC in January 2005 with enthusiastic commentary by historian Dan Cruickshank and interviews with descendants of people shown in the films, and is available on DVD from the BBC or the BFI.
The BFI and the NFA have toured the Collection extensively presenting over 100 shows throughout the North of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales and proving once again that local films for local people are as popular today as they were a century ago. Vanessa Toulmin of the National Fairground Archive has also presented specialist feature shows on the history of Rugby League with Professor Tony Collins, seaside entertainment with John Walton and football history with Dave Russell.
In May 2011, the Collection was inscribed in UNESCO's UK Memory of the World Register.
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