CHAPTERS IN OUR LIVES - HORTON FAMILY (1938)

This film was made by Rotherham steelworker Ernest Horton. It brings together various films made over an extended period of time. It is not known whether Ernest made any other films that may have gone missing. Interviewed for the ITV series The Way We Were, Horton’s two daughters, Vera and Margaret, relate how their father was a devoted family man, never going to the pub and rarely going out on his own. He was a very creative and busy person, building a summer house, a swing and making the steps that can be seen in the new garden. Leaving school at just 13 to supplement the family income, his two brothers staying on at school, Ernest was a self-taught man, an avid reader and lover of films, regularly taking his daughters to the cinema. During the war he was exempt from military duty due to the contribution of his job to war work, although he was a member of the Home Guard.

As can be seen from the film, the house the Horton’s lived in overlooked fields (now built on), and his daughters relate how they had the freedom to play out in the local countryside. It was a traditional family, with mum at home as a housewife, and both sets of grandparents living nearby. These would regularly visit during the week, and they in turn would visit their grandparents for Sunday tea, reflecting a time when families were more tightly knit. In addition to this, the family would regularly go to Clifton Park for a day out at weekends, even in cold weather as seen in the film.

This pattern was disturbed somewhat when the doctor persuaded Horton to change his job for health reasons, and grandad Lucas died of a stroke aged 60 in 1944. The family then moved to Stainforth where Horton got a job at the local colliery. Now living in a more rural setting, the family would go cycling over to Scolls Wood, mum and dad on their tandem. Being without a car, their uncle would take them over to his caravan at Flamborough, again shown in the film. Being a naturally active and creative man Horton continued to be busy growing vegetables and making things, but his filmmaking wasn’t to last long – just long enough to leave us with this endearing glimpse into a Yorkshire family before the age of TV.

References

BBC Radio Ballads, Song of Steel
This has an archive of interviews with steelworkers, and other information on working in steel.