Historic 'everyday' films unearthed

Captured by a firm in Lancashire around 1901, they have been described as one of the most important finds in the country's film history over the last 100 years.

Some of the films were due to be shown at Sheffield University on Saturday, where they are being restored to their former glory.

Shown to hundreds of people on big screens at fairgrounds, they provide snapshots of a range of activities including the first electric tram in Accrington.

Historian Peter Worden found the films in rusted barrels that had not been opened since the 1920s.

He told BBC News 24 the films are a "window on the past that has briefly opened".

Mr Worden, also an optician, said: "Had these films not been saved that window would have stayed shut forever."

He found up to 700 films in the barrels and while many are not in good condition, an operation to restore them to their original quality is underway.

Vanessa Toulmin, of the Sheffield University-based National Fairground Archive, said the films show the people in them did not look further than their local area to have a good time.

"What was interesting for people at the turn of the century was their own city, their own town, their own environment, not scenes of Paris, or London, or America," she said.

"It was the first time people had ever seen themselves on the screen."

Mitchell and Kenyon, a Blackburn-based company, was commissioned to produce the films by travelling fairgrounds, which wanted special events recorded.

'Great War'

Other films show people on a day out on the Mersey, coal miners after their shift had ended and an early rugby league match on a snow-covered pitch.

Ms Toulmin said: "When you see the films of hundreds of schoolchildren...aged eight, nine and 10, you realise that in 10 or 12 years time the Great War would be starting and many of them would never have survived.

"So there's a sadness to them as well because they capture an age, an innocence."