Original subtitles

This is Edwardian Britain,

the remarkable years at the turn of the 20th century.

It's an incredible period.

It's the shaping of our modern era.

We wouldn't be where we are without the Edwardians.

And now, for the first time, in colour.

History tends to be about the rich, the famous, the powerful,

whereas these people, they're ordinary people.

This footage is about them.

Britain was the richest country in the world

on the back of the hard work of men, women and children.

We often think of the working class as very drab, in old clothes,

in black and white,

and it shows what they did have -

that they led these lives of colour and of richness.

It is an age when workers were allowed to enjoy life

after the long austerity of the Victorians.

Look at those colours, gorgeous.

People out to enjoy themselves.

Families out together.

But it is also a time of conflict,

as workers and women demand new rights.

Their use of three colours - purple, white, and green -

and everybody knew what that stood for - three words, votes for women.

Change did come, but on a scale nobody could foresee.

And this is incredibly poignant because it is filmed just two weeks

before the start of the war,

and that war was going to change everything.

Life in Edwardian Britain began with the death

of Queen Victoria in 1901.

Millions lined London's streets to witness the funeral.

Behind Victoria's coffin rode her son and successor -

Edward VII -

the last king to give his name to an era.

With a new century and a new king,

the nation now looked forward to change.

The summer of 1902, on the day of Edward VII's Coronation,

the nation takes to the streets to celebrate,

like this one here in Accrington -

shown in colour for the first time.

See, this one just fascinates me

to see it because the pageantry

of it, from Accrington.

It's just another kind of, northern, kind of, old industrial town.

And when we look at the efforts that have been put into

the costumes, the sort of expense that would have gone

into this parade.

It is bright to the point of being blindingly bright,

but that is part of the spectacle.

In the absence of TV, in the absence of the internet and a computer

screen on every phone - this is the spectacle

that brings people together.

When you look at the whole history of the Edwardian and Victorian

period, people were on the streets all the time.

They would parade for temperance,

they would parade for the Whit Walks,

they would parade for Catholic processions, Protestant positions.

So they paraded massive, big banners, huge pageantry, dressed up,

and it was a spectacle.

And this Coronation procession would have lasted about two hours.

I think what we're seeing here is a film of how conscious people

are of what is happening in the rest of the British Empire.

How people have absorbed descriptions of empire

from newspapers, from popular culture, and so on.

Remember, this is only three months after the end of the Boer War.

There would have been a lot of talk about Africans.

And I think this film reflects how globalised thinking was

at of this moment in time.

These are people, in the absence of having sufficient people

of colour, have blacked themselves up to include those people of colour

as part of the British story.

So, they want the British story to be authentic

and, for it to be authentic, it has to include people of the empire.

The British Empire was made up of 400 million people

and its capital, London, was the richest city on the planet,

with the biggest port in the world -

importing food, steel, wool and timber.

This film from 1904 shows 11 miles of wharfs

handling 60,000 ships a year.

Tens of thousands worked in the docks and in the markets.

My great-grandfather was a driver,

he used to pick up chemicals from

the docks onto a horse-driven cart

and drive them back to a chemical factory in south London.

He started his life in this very sphere.

I think that's a pretty dangerous job,

driving chemicals on the back of...

..of a cart through central London, yeah.

Amazing I'm here.

So, the London Docks, it's a real hub.

It's built on physical labour, the physical transport of goods.

And a lot of these men in the pictures, they would be

casual workers, hired by the day.

They would have to turn up to the dock to see

if there is work for them that day.

The Edwardian period's a pretty tough time to be alive.

OK, society's changing and reforms are being introduced, but people

are working very long hours.

Average working week of 60 hours plus.

Low wages, on the whole, for most people.

So, everybody you see here would have a story to tell,

I'm sure, about their working lives.

Bobby Cooley works at the new Covent Garden Flower Market in Vauxhall.

He was the third generation of porters to work in the old

Covent Garden, then a fruit and the market - not just flowers.

My dad's grandad worked

as a porter in Covent Garden

and my dad's dad had lots of uncles,

at one time, I think I had

seven relatives working.

I was 16 when I started.

I was one of the last kiddies to be working hard in Covent Garden.

Little had changed in the way the market

was run since Edwardian times.

Lots and lots of vegetables for sale, all sorts of stuff, looks

like spring, with all the vegetables.

Guys portering with cotchels on their heads and...

..all sorts of things on their head.

Bushels, which I know have 28 pound in them.

Apples, looks like cabbages.

You could tell a market porter, he normally had a scarf and a cap

because you're carrying a lot of stuff on your nut

and you don't want it to completely do your brains in!

Ladies, now this is an important part.

Ladies here working hard in the market, the flower market's

porters, and in the veg market, shucking peas and processing stuff.

I can really relate to these people in this picture here,

because they're working as I used to work.

They're working with wicker and boxes, where we used to work

with cardboard and plastic.

But, yeah, we shoved as much stuff around as they did.

Covent Garden, back in the 1900s, it was the larder of London.

You had the Borough Market and Spitalfields, but Covent Garden

was the big hub.

Anything that was going anywhere was going to Covent Garden first.

You can imagine, quite a dangerous place to work, a lot of heavy goods

being shifted around and horses moving.

You know, them ladies up there were quite fearsome ladies.

They used to...

..as much as the men, as far as the swearing goes, I was told!

Having a hard life is a good life because, if you're working hard,

you're getting paid.

And all the guys in here, they're up early, whether we have a good trade

or bad, they're here to do a day's work.

And mostly, as it's eased off over the years, it is harder

because there is less money to go around

but we're all after that money.

It is lovely to see it in colour.

I'm seeing flowers you can identify -

daffodils, hyacinths, daffodils, looks like irises.

I'm seeing vegetables that look edible, rather than black and white.

I might have spotted one of my grandads here,

if I'm careful, back in the day,

because we've been here since 1905 and that looks about

round about when it was.

London might have been the capital of the Empire, but Britain's real

wealth lay further north, where millions worked in the mills

and the mines.

Long hours, accidents, deaths -

it's a really dangerous industry.

You had to work so fast.

You had to really...

..go like that.

You couldn't stop.

And woe betide you if you missed any of the dirt.

Edwardian Britain was built on grindingly hard work.

More than 10% of the population relied on coal for their livelihood.

Never had more coal been dug.

Britain's status as the most powerful nation in the world

depended on coal.

It was our biggest export, it powered our industry

and heated our homes.

Here, for the first time in colour, we see the life of a coal miner

in Wigan in 1910.

Coal kept the nation going,

the country would not have survived without it,

because it was so heavily reliant on industry.

And with new technology coming in,

they needed it more than ever.

So, when we see these men, you know, the nation is on their shoulders.

We just can't imagine what it would be like

to be a miner at that time. I mean...

..extremely tough conditions, extremes of temperature,

both hot and cold.

Long hours, accidents, deaths, I mean,

it's a really dangerous industry.

That was absolutely integral

to everybody's everyday life

and the industrial life of the country.

In Lancashire, its coal heritage is well remembered

by the Chorley Empire Film Community.

My grandfather worked in the pit...

..in Golborne at this time.

In fact, he was injured in a disaster.

There was a fall of coal, several people were killed,

but he lost his leg. He never worked again.

And when you look at the conditions they were working under,

it looks absolutely terrifying.

So I look at them and I think one of them could be my grandfather,

yes, which is extraordinary.

It is very moving, it really is.

There were 350 collieries in Lancashire alone.

Eric Lancaster worked as a miner on the Wigan coalface,

where they mined using the same process as the Edwardians.

I started at the colliery at 14 and a half.

I worked in the stores

until I could go down the mine.

And then I went down the mine,

and was on what they called the haulage,

where the rope used to pull the tubs along,

and then I eventually got on the coalface.

They're getting in the cage now to descend the mine.

You went down at seven because the pit whistle would go then.

You could have two miles to get to the coalface.

The other man rider, local, that took you a mile, and then you walked

a mile, then you got to the coalface,

and then you started work.

You'd keep on working until you'd cleared your coal -

it was called the breadth.

It was about the length of a terrace sitting room, about 12 feet

and about four-foot thick, and four-foot advance.

When you cleared it, you had advanced the face four foot.

It was a tough, and it was hot and it was sweaty.

Just watching this film, it is realistic

because it was quite dirty, you got black.

And when you finished your shift, you was covered in coal dust,

so you wanted to get into the pithead baths

for a real hot shower.

It wasn't just the men who worked in the coal industry -

women did, too.

Banned from working underground, thousands of girls and women worked

on the surface, sorting coal and loading wagons - they were known

as the pit brow lasses.

Rita Culshaw is the fourth generation from her family

who worked in the mines.

I left school when I was 15 and I started work on the Monday,

on the pit brow,

and I worked with my sister.

Your hands got really cold, and black, and dirty.

You used to put Vaseline on your eyelids, so that it was easy

to wash the coal dust out, but, after you'd had a bath,

you were still picking bits of coal out of the corner of your eyes!

Those pit brow girls, happy and smiling, like we all did.

Pushing the tubs.

I remember they still dressed like that, and they still folded

their arms like that, as well.

Aggressive, defensive,

because they won't let the men pick on them.

They're picking the dirt out of the coal

and you had to work so fast.

You had to really...

..go like that.

You couldn't stop.

And woe betide you if you missed any of the dirt.

You weren't allowed to speak to each other.

But one girl there, named Edna Woodcock, she was a comic.

She used to pick a spade up

and she used to get the spade.

# I'm leaning on a lump

# I'll step the corner, up the sleeve... #

And she used to sing, they all used to sing,

but they weren't allowed to speak.

I think it was the atmosphere of being with such friendly girls.

There was no arguing, or backbiting, or anything.

It was just...well, it was a job.

I loved it, I loved it, and I loved the camaraderie of the girls.

Oh, memories!

Besides coal, cotton was one of the biggest employers

in Edwardian Britain.

Britain's cotton industry reached its peak in 1912,

when eight billion yards of cloth were being produced, using raw

materials from around the Empire.

With thousands of mills and weaving sheds across the county, Lancashire

was the cotton capital of the world -

and it wouldn't have been possible without the women who made

up more than 60% of the workforce.

Chief employer of women at this time

was the cotton industry.

They were employed as weavers.

A really good weaver could operate up to eight looms,

so they would work in a section of the factory, and they would

just watch the looms, and, if there was any snags,

or the shuttle needed to be refilled,

they would get that ready.

Very, very highly skilled work, weaving, at this point.

Deafening, as well.

Actually, my mum worked in mill - it was Fountain Mill.

And, as soon as the doors opened,

it was deafening,

was the sound of it.

And my mum was partly deaf, well, a lot of the ladies were.

And they had to lip-read to each other, or they would make

hand signals to communicate with each other because of the amount

of noise and dust.

Edwardian film-makers couldn't easily film

inside the mills, but this film shows the women workers leaving

the Alfred Butterworth cotton factory, near Manchester, in 1901.

What's fascinating is that the girls' hair is all covered,

so women do not show long hair.

So, if you see the girls, the shawls are completely covering them

and you don't see their hair at all, you just see their faces.

There is all this debate now about the hijab and about women

covering their hair, and we forget that, we've lost that as part

of our culture.

About 100 years ago, you wouldn't walk out in the streets

of Lancashire with your hair down.

In Edwardian Britain, men's roles have been publicly documented.

But women's work could be every bit as skilled,

as captured in this rare footage from 1910.

Of the Siemens Brothers factory in Dalston, east London,

where women are busy making electric lamps.

Watching the work that she's doing, it's skilled work,

you know, it is really intricate, detailed work.

Difficult work, as well, which would have taken a lot

of concentration, a lot of effort.

When we think about the working hours as well,

how long you would sit and do that for.

And the colours of it, again, we often think of the working class

as very drab, in old clothes, in black and white.

And you see the different patterns, the different textures,

it makes them real.

It shows what they did have.

That these aren't people to pity, that they lead these lives

of colour, and of richness as well, in one way.

And I love that she's wearing her locket and her jewellery

as well, you know, it challenges a lot of people's perceptions

of what the working class would have looked like in Edwardian Britain.

This is a working woman, she isn't something out of a Dickens novel,

she is real, she's got her jewellery, she's neat, she's tidy.

The quality of the film, the exactitude of the images,

it's really extraordinary.

We're used to everybody being a bit

distant, but these images of

ordinary people working,

they're very touching, really,

they're very moving, because you feel a kind of human

connection with somebody who is just, you know, they're doing

something and there's nothing more human than working

with your hands, really.

And to have these very, very beautiful and very clear images,

people doing intricate work - for you to watch.

You can't help but look at her hair and her hair's been done

very nicely for the film,

but it seems to be moved by a gust of wind.

It's a small thing which goes beyond what's in the image

and reminds you that you're looking at a real person, a real incident.

Those are the things that connect us to the past.

It's just a lovely to see life

as it was being lived and see

people at work.

It's the mundaneness, the humanity of it somehow.

Concentration.

They used to talk about women and low-paid work, you know,

the invisible work, five Cs, so women as cleaning, cooking,

cashiering, clerking and caring.

They were also women in factories, as we've seen here,

but it's the lowest-paid work, often the slightly dangerous work.

But, having said that, the options for men as well were much

more defined and confined for particular classes of people

than they are now.

In Edwardian Britain, all classes of people had to wear hats -

you weren't fully dressed if you didn't wear one -

and the hat defined your position in society.

From top hats and boaters, to bowlers and flat caps.

Stockport was the world centre for hat-making in 1910.

Here, it's the men who are hard at work

making the popular fur felt hat.

Steve Cossey is perhaps the last apprentice from Stockport

still working in the hat industry.

The processes that they go through are over 130 processes,

just from that,

to actually get it blocked

into a shape.

The blocking aspect is done with the boiling water.

So the hats are put into the boiling water, so which means the hat body

then is pliable, so they're able to stretch the hat body

over the wooden blocks.

Sometimes the air gets trapped between the hat body and the block,

so they used to blow in it to get all the air out.

The men could block around probably 200 to 300 hats a day.

You can imagine the problem they have with their hands, putting

it in and out of the boiling water.

But it wasn't just their hands which suffered.

I'm a hatter and many people would know the term from Alice

in Wonderland, the Mad Hatter.

Now, the Mad Hatter comes from when they used to use Mercury

to make the hats and it made all the men who made the hats

go nutty, basically.

And this wasn't realised until quite late after they'd been using it

and then once that was found, then they abolished it

and was never to be used again.

It was very hard, very hard.

It's quite a lot of pressure on the hand and it's the vibration

of the fur rubbing on your hands which can cause the sores.

What we want to do is keep this tradition going so the hat industry

is still alive, but we want to keep using the traditional

methods and make them in the UK, in Stockport or Denton,

just like they did in the early 1900s.

If life over nd another. Hundred years ago was a very different,

the biggest difference was in the lives that

children were forced to lead in Edwardian Britain.

It would have been hard work, heavy, dirty, hard work, and children

were useful because they could get between the looms.

Talk about social mobility, these days, these kids

wouldn't have had an opportunity to stay on at school very long

and going to university would be like going to a different planet.

Edwardian Britain was the richest, most powerful nation in the world.

Its power and wealth was built on the hard work of men,

women and children.

All children had a basic education, but most left school by 12.

The factories and mills depended on child workers

and families needed the income.

Across the nation, even the smallest of children

would try and find work doing something.

Former politician Alan Johnson grew up in poverty in post-war London,

in conditions similar to many of the children featured

here in the early 1900s.

I love this.

You see, I used to drink water out of those fountains,

where there was a fountain for the horse, and then drinking

water on the end.

You saw them all around North Kensington,

and on the corner of my street, there was a horse trough

and the totters would come and tie their horse up at lunchtime,

usually pop in the Earl of Warwick for a pint.

And they'd put a nose bag over the horse's ears for the food

and then take them to the trough for the water.

And those kids look as if they're up to no good, three ragamuffins.

Difficult to know what they are, they could be rag pickers -

people who make an existence by just

harvesting discarded clothes

and recycling them in some way.

It certainly doesn't look like a toy cart, it looks like they're at work

probably on the Embankment.

Some children worked as half-timers -

school until noon, then to work -

like these seen here, at the Butterworth cotton factory near Manchester.

So, this is the reason why Lancashire was such a prosperous

county in the Edwardian and the Victorian age,

because the women worked, the men worked and the children worked.

So they would have three or four incomes per household

and the factories, they would employ up to 6,000-8,000 people,

some of these factories. It would have been hard work, heavy, dirty,

hard work, and children were useful

because they could get between the looms.

The way we now see children is very different from the way

in which Edwardian society saw children.

For working families, they saw children as a source of labour,

extra labour, especially labour that men didn't want to do,

that women couldn't perhaps do and that they could.

But there was a call for reform, and for children to attend schools,

and certainly laws came in to try and force all children to attend

school, but many didn't, many still worked, and many of the families

relied on the labour that children provided.

This was the first age of film-making, so it was still unusual

to see a film camera outside your factory gate.

The children are intrigued.

It's almost like he's looking, going, "Look at me." And he looks,

and he's playing in front and he hits his friend.

But he's so natural in front of the camera,

he's like the instant film star.

He does look like the Artful Dodger, you've really brought him to life.

In their faces,

there's a lot in there.

They look old beyond their years and it's partly the clothes,

it's partly that they're at work, it's partly that some of those faces

are pinched with poverty.

And they will have seen a lot in their short lives, I'm sure.

All the missed opportunities, I mean, you talk about social

mobility these days,

these kids wouldn't have had an opportunity to...

..certainly not to stay on at school very long

and going to university would be like going to a different planet.

So they knew where they were going, into the factory.

There's a bloke with bowlegs coming down there - that's rickets.

Can hardly walk, look... Painful.

Children were at risk of rickets whilst they were still growing.

It's caused by malnutrition, lack of vitamin D and lack of sunlight.

Well, it was beginning to die out, but it was still

a fairly common feature.

So, living conditions are improving, infant health beginning to improve,

all these things that contribute to those kind of changes,

but, as you can see, it's still very present in some of these films.

Kind of gets me is that some of these lads probably didn't come

back from the war.

You start to project our knowledge

of what would happen

in the build-up,

you think of these lads who are

staring at the camera and, you know, look so innocent.

This generation, this decade of time

would change their lives forever.

So it feels like quite poignant, when you do see them coming out.

It's what I find fascinating about these films, picking out

an individual and wondering exactly what became of them...

..and where their children are today, or their grandchildren.

This was a new century, with a new king and new thinking.

For the British people, this meant,

while they worked hard, they got to play, too.

What we're seeing here is children from Altrincham really excited,

about to board a train to Mobberley, which is only seven miles away,

and it's their big day out.

For these kids, they get to see acrobats, bizarre puppeteers,

it may seem a little bit underpowered for the kids of today,

but, at that time, for these children, this is a really special,

really liberating experience.

It was a hard time,

the Edwardian period, for children,

because their parents often

were working full-time,

they didn't have a lot of opportunity to get outdoors.

This is one of the reasons why outings like this were so important,

to try and get children out into the countryside, away

from the sort of polluted areas in towns, and into the fresh air,

so they could run around and play.

Childhood was very short at this point.

You know, people had to grow up very quickly and get to work and...

..we have a concept of childhood really lasting now until sort of 18,

but childhood in many ways was over by the time you were 12

in the Edwardian period.

But men, women and children were united in their pride

for their king, country and community.

They came together for huge celebrations, like this one in 1902,

the once every 20 years Preston Guild,

opened by the mayor Frederick Arthur Stanley, the 16th Earl of Derby.

The week-long processions date back to Medieval times,

but now a new world is being celebrated and new inventions.

So it's not unlike a modern carnival, different floats coming

through the town, and they're all part of the textile trade,

and of course that's the thing that had made this region,

had made the area what it was.

And that is the symbol of the trade, I mean, the loom.

That would have meant so much to so many people.

Generations of people's families would have worked in different

elements around those kinds of machines, from the kids sweeping

the floor to the supervisors running a whole floor of hundreds

of these things.

It would have been a huge occasion for the town, you can see

the pavements thronged, especially if it's only happening every 20

years or so.

What's that pig doing?!

I'm surprised to see a pig in the middle of a textile parade!

Wow!

The famous Myerscough pig.

So, Myerscough were a butchers based in Preston, on Shepherd Street,

and they had a factory, but in the 19th century they became

famous for their sausages, which were called MP sausages.

The pig became a sort of mascot for them, it went on to appear

in two more guilds in 1922 and in 1952,

so it became a bit of a star.

Sadly, we don't know what happened to it.

I mean, look at the guys, you've got butchers with huge knives as well.

I've never...that, it's crazy.

I think, because you've got colourised, things stand out

that you wouldn't have seen before.

It's a fantastic piece of footage.

Leisure time, previously just for the rich, was now available

to the working class -

even if it was just one day a week.

Seasonal fun parks were very popular in the early 1900s, like this one

near Halifax in Yorkshire.

This is Sunny Vale Hipperholme pleasure gardens.

It was two shillings to get in

and it was a place where the emerging middle-class,

and also the aspirational working class, would go

for their leisure time.

So you'd have boating lakes, you'd have swings, and people

dancing, so it was just...

You dressed up, it was your Sunday best.

You put your best shoes on, you didn't wear your clogs,

you wore everything.

This is actually a early form of a roller-coaster, it's called

a mountain glider, or a switchback.

We were taken up the hill by a horse, and you can see

the horse in the shot,

and then you just were let down on this almost like a carriage

that you would see in coal mines, and you're on this little rickety

carriage and then it would brake at the bottom.

The man operating the mountain glider is Joseph Bunce,

owner of Sunnyvale Gardens,

who paid for the filming as an early tourist film.

One of the other activities filmed was donkey riding, a seemingly

hazardous pursuit for the ladies.

Oh!

Ouch!

That looks very painful!

Humiliation on film has never ceased to be everybody's favourite thing,

you know!

Also, I thought perhaps maybe she is drunk.

They do look as if they're having a wonderful time,

the lady who fell off the donkey laughs and gets straight back on!

I mean, you know, good for her!

They're obviously having a great time!

Film-makers would often introduce comic interludes to their films

to keep cinema audiences entertained.

If you look closer at the lady,

you can see that her hair is cut short.

Perhaps this is an early example of a stuntman caught on film.

With the northern mill workers allowed one full week off a year,

that created a whole new sector -

the world's first seaside holiday

resorts for working and middle classes alike,

and one towered above them all.

Blackpool had a unique offer.

Nowhere else had three piers, nowhere else had a Blackpool Tower.

It was the place to be.

Written in the Edwardian era

was the richest, most powerful nation in the world.

All this was thanks to the enormous hard work by its people.

Finally, leisure, too, was part of their lives.

For the mill workers of the north, they could now enjoy one week's

unpaid holiday a year

and, for millions of people in the early 1900s,

that meant the seaside.

And the ultimate place for Edwardian entertainment, Blackpool.

This is Blackpool Victoria Pier, and this is really a fascinating film

because this is the third pier that was built in Blackpool.

So, Blackpool has three piers, it has the North Pier,

the Central Pier and this was called the Victoria Pier

and it was opened in 1893.

Now it's called the South Pier.

The three piers were all connected by the promenade and the trams

running along Blackpool's central seafront.

This film was made commemorating the opening of the new promenade

in 1904, which allowed, you know, this fantastic promenade walkway

right up to the new pier, Victoria Pier.

And what they're doing is promenading, really what piers

were built for, you promenaded on the pier.

It's the idea of you being able to walk out to sea and being able

to look back at Blackpool.

I mean, that was a huge attraction.

I mean, promenading was a big social activity at this point.

Wonderful glimpse back at the Sands there,

of the early housing in Blackpool.

Most of that is now gone.

It's been replaced by large hotels.

This tram is also incredible because it's also advertising

Blackpool's famous Winter Gardens,

fantastic indoor entertainment complex, with the opera house

and then the Empress Ballroom.

So, a real palace of entertainment, one of the big attractions

in Blackpool, where everybody went to enjoy the greatest stars

of the day, or dance on the fantastic Empress Ballroom dance floor.

You've got middle-class people and working-class people

all mingling together in ballrooms, everybody knew how to dance,

everybody could waltz,

and it was a big part of the culture of this time.

You dressed up to go to the seaside in the way that you dress

up to go out on a Saturday night.

You only had that week off and you didn't get paid for it.

You'd save your money or you'd have holiday clubs.

They came here for access to the sea, to bathe.

They came here for the sweets, the treats, the ice cream.

You know, they came for things

that they couldn't really get at home.

At the same time as the Victoria Pier, the great Blackpool

institution of the Pleasure Beach was opening and developing.

They brought these incredible rides from all over the world.

And the River Caves was this incredible journey,

so you went through and you went through all the caves

of the world, in Blackpool,

so it was an astonishing attraction.

The River Caves attraction is still running here today.

The other ride going strong is the captive flying machines

by Sir Hiram Maxim, the oldest ride on the Pleasure Beach,

thrilling the public since 1904.

Maxim is best known for designing the first automatic machine gun,

but he dreamt of inventing powered flight.

By designing this amusement ride,

he hoped to raise funds to build a working aircraft.

Sadly, this was the nearest to the flying machine he achieved

in his lifetime.

The Wright brothers got there first.

With four million visitors a year, Blackpool became a magnet

for a new wave of entrepreneurs.

The Illuminations we enjoy today first lit up the town in 1912

and nowhere else had the ultimate moneymaking attraction -

Blackpool Tower.

It was built on the most prominent position,

overlooking the Central Beach,

was where a Blackpool sprung from, it was where all

the entertainment was first offered to the masses who arrived

on their day trips and holidays.

Blackpool Tower was always about making money

and it made a lot of money.

It could have thousands of people go through its door every day

for a mixture of attractions,

so you could go dancing, you could have a cup of tea.

It was almost like a multipurpose venue that we think of nowadays,

before they were built.

There's nothing wasted in this building,

every single bit of this building is economically viable.

Even the legs of Blackpool Tower were used to house a circus,

designed by Frank Matcham.

Blackpool Tower Circus is the oldest continuous circus in the world

cos it's never broke season.

3,000 people would come here for three shows a day.

It was advertised as a variety and aquatic circus.

So, basically, this ring would drop down and 40,000 gallons of water

would come in, and then people would swim, horses would dive into it.

The central stars were the clowns.

The Blackpool Tower clowns were very famous.

In the early period, there was definitely elephants

and in the morning, during the season, they would take them

down and you'd go out onto the promenade and they would

actually go swimming in the water, in the sea.

And it was a very clever attraction because basically the people

would come to see the elephants going in the sea, but it was also

a way of advertising the circus.

Blackpool is very much a place of showing and enjoying.

Obviously, after the death of Queen Victoria, people could actually

just feel more relieved and Edward

was a fantastic king in that way.

He was a very jolly king,

but those nine years of his reign are particularly poignant,

because so much social change, but so much joy as well.

This is a form of time travel.

These are lives being lived out in front of your eyes

to act as our witness, really, to the past.

I think they're wonderful.

Seeing these films, with their full colour again, you get a sense

of life in a way which is much more direct and much more kind

of immediate and affecting.

I think what some of these images show you is the individual

behind the wider story

and, in the individual, you have those who enjoy their life.

I mean, they have limited opportunities and aspirations,

but they're still having fun one day

and there's an awful story the next,

and I think the images take you to that level

of the individual's experiences

and I think there's something really powerful and beautiful

about that, actually, because too often in history you put

people into boxes, and then the box has a narrative

around how hard life was.

And, yes, it was hard, but there was so much more going on.

Next time...

Edwardian Britain locked in a power struggle.

Workers unite and fight for fairer work and pay.

Women demand a voice, the vote and a place in the world.

Victories are won, but a whole generation would make

the ultimate sacrifice.

All this is captured on Edwardian Britain In Colour.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media