Episode 1 The Travelling Picture Show

The Travelling Picture Show is giving four Northern Ireland towns

the chance to celebrate their past, their stories and their characters,

as captured by local amateur filmmakers and television crews.

Now, some of the films

have lain hidden in attics and archives for decades.

Now we're bringing them back

to the heart of the community they came from.

We're going to meet some of the people who made the films,

those who appear in them, and those with a story to tell.

We've invited them to come

and see the past flicker into life on the silver screen,

and get a rare glimpse of their town and its people in days gone by.

We're on the road in Enniskillen,

a glorious location to showcase wonderful films from a golden age.

I can hardly believe we done it!

And the original Top Gear, 1950s style.

I would say there never was as many in Clogher since!

There's even a chance to see the sun in the 1940s.

To Enniskillen now in the West,

the charming and romantic island town on Lough Erne.

The town which, in the Stuart days, laid the foundations...

Welcome to Enniskillen, with this beautiful old castle

standing on the banks of the River Erne.

And just for the record,

the river actually links the upper and lower loughs,

all 52 miles of it, so pretty impressive.

Now, for me, this is something of a poignant return,

because when I was a child,

I used to come here every summer for my holidays,

and I stayed with some relatives who lived in the town.

I must say, they were very happy days.

Our Travelling Picture Show tent has drawn an excited crowd,

eagerly anticipating a matinee screening

in a beautiful location, so let's get the party started.

# For goodness sake

# I got the hippy hippy shakes

# Yeah, I got the shakes

# I got the hippy hippy shakes

# Ooh! I can't sit still... #

The Girls' Friendly Society trip to Lough Erne

was filmed by the Reverend Taylor in about 1960,

and our audience loved it.

In fact, some were actually there.

# Yeah, it's in the bag

# Ooh! The hippy hippy shakes

# Well now, you shake it to the left... #

I was playing the accordion!

I was mortified when I saw it,

but it is lovely to look back and see the fun we had.

Out of nothing, really.

# Oh, it's in the bag

# Ooh, the hippy hippy shake

# Ooh, the hippy hippy shake

# Ooh, the hippy hippy shake. #

APPLAUSE

MUSIC: "In The Mood" by Glenn Miller

There are many, many more lovely old films about Enniskillen to be seen,

starting right here at a very famous pub

in the middle of the high street, it's known as Blakes of the Hollow.

Now, back during the Second World War,

William Blake, who owned the pub, he used to make many home movies,

and I have to tell you, they have really stood the test of time.

But now three of his sons

have come back to the pub where they were raised

to reminisce about their lives, so beautifully captured on film.

When we went to the seaside, he always had the camera with him then.

We took a house in Bundoran for two months of the summer,

so that's when all this photography was done, you know?

The war years were on,

and we were able to get a lot of things, like butter.

It wasn't so scarce down there as it was up here.

Food rationing in the UK meant that the Blakes

and indeed many others across Enniskillen

were rearing pigs in the backyard to feed the family.

But just a few miles up the road in the Republic, life was a breeze.

We were such a big family that we hired a local bus,

Cassidy's Erne Bus Service to bring us down.

We had a great time in Bundoran, we had a towel around our necks,

we were in our bare feet, we had the togs swinging,

and we went wherever we wanted to go.

Whenever we got away from Mammy and Daddy!

We used to go to a place called Rougey,

which is about 20 foot deep when the tide's in,

and about four foot deep when the tide's very far out!

There was a diving board there that you could jump off,

or if you were very brave,

you might attempt to jump off the high rock in Rougey,

which only was for very special people.

Swimming in the horse pool was great.

Once you got to the horse pool,

you felt you were big then, you were getting into the deeper water.

You'd come out of the water,

and you'd be shivering like nobody's business,

and Mammy would wrap round the big towel

and get us quickly into our short trousers.

And your knees were really knocking together,

and she'd say, "Go and run around there and get warm."

It wasn't that bad during the summer, it was lovely.

I just remember that Dad did make the film

of you and I sparring, but it was harmless.

Showing off our boxing skills, whatever skills we had!

We'd have our spats, don't get us wrong.

-We had our little rows.

-Did we?

-We'd still be thick for each other

when it would come to a difference with somebody else,

we'd stand by each other.

My mother wore a turban, which was a kind of tradition.

-She wore a tie and a turban.

-And a jacket.

-I can still see her in that.

-Quite fashionable.

There's somewhere else that you can see she's counting the children,

-you know, to make sure that they're all around.

-All the chickens.

The hen with the chickens, you know.

She was watching to see accountability, you know.

I think they are very important

as a sort of a social history nearly, you know,

in that you do get shots of people,

and they're people from all levels of society in them.

-I mean, you probably remember one man taking off Churchill and so on.

-Yeah.

And there was another fellow walked past the door,

-a fellow called Micky Ward who was a cattle drover.

-Cattle drover.

-Isobel Topping.

-There's Isobel.

Her husband had the garage, Topping's Garage, down at the end.

-TP Topping.

-And she ran the pharmacy over there.

-My father...

-He was very camera-shy, you don't see him.

There's only one or two pieces in his own movies where he appears.

And sometimes it was done surreptitiously

-and he didn't know about it but...

-And he usually had the pipe.

He might have the pipe or he might have a cigarette.

And the modest man who loved filming his family

scored a major royal exclusive right on his own doorstep.

This was 1946, just after the war.

The occasion was a visit to Enniskillen by Princess Elizabeth,

as she was then, probably in her early 20s at the most.

The film picks her up coming from the Imperial Hotel,

which is now Boots, up to the town hall.

She went inside and then appeared on the balcony,

just directly opposite where my father was.

I don't think anybody from the media recorded that visit in Enniskillen.

So I said, "Dad, where did you get colour at that time?"

And he said that he got it

from American troops that were stationed here in Enniskillen.

Because you couldn't get Kodak colour in the British Isles...

-For years.

-..until about 1949 or '50.

My dad's cine camera was a little 16mm camera,

but there was no big focusing lenses

or anything else on it like you have today,

and I would think that if dad was alive today,

he would be really enjoying the technology.

The film of Princess Elizabeth, as was,

on the balcony of the town hall in Enniskillen

is absolutely beautiful

and captures a time when we can see the shops,

we can see the streets, the people, those poor policemen struggling,

you know, crowd control as it was in 1947.

There you have it, the power of old films to take us right back in time.

Now, in rural Fermanagh,

where farming has long been the way to make ends meet,

the methods and machinery have changed a lot over the years.

Harry Dunlop was a fresh-faced apprentice mechanic

when the latest Ferguson tractor was unveiled in Clogher,

and he's come along to see his brief film debut at the tender age of 15.

The farmer was excited to see this tractor,

because that was the first time he was going to see her,

and they were all there to see this box opened, see what was in it.

Everybody was dressed up, and at that time there was a lot of...

The men wore a lot of hats, you know,

and there was another fella I remember who was there,

who was Sammy Lyons, who was a great tractor man, you know,

and he had a big bow tie and all on.

I would say there never was as many in Clogher since!

The tractor colours did stand out.

I can remember the tractor colours, the golds,

the gold belly, as they called her, you know,

and then she had the grey bonnet, like.

Aye, I appeared at the right-hand side of the tractor here.

I had my back to the camera there, yes.

Oh, I used to have the boiler suit all natty.

The farmer, you see, would have been asking me several questions about it,

about what this done and what done and you know.

When you see the head of hair, like,

I just can't believe it, that's the truth.

I'd like to get it back again, but it's not possible!

What a great record of a bygone era in Clogher,

filmed by a local gentleman called Colonel Tracey.

And it's thanks to Gordon McLaren

that we've managed to get hold of it.

Tell me your interest, originally, in collecting this old film.

Well, in my younger days, Colonel Tracey,

who lived in Augher Castle, started the Cinema Trust in Augher,

and as well as that, he had a camera, and he used to take weddings,

old school photographs, anything of interest.

He used to film the local shopkeepers and my father was one of them,

and there's a very good picture

of him coming out and speaking to one of his customers.

Our shop was right on the corner, and we sold everything.

Willie Ramsay, the cycle man, a very good picture of him now.

He missed nobody.

The Colonel took all the local films and used them to draw the crowd.

Now there's nothing that pleases people more

than seeing themselves on the big screen.

This is a...a programme of the cinema 1959, this one is.

We have two colour films, they were two shillings to get in.

I see The Caine Mutiny with Humphrey Bogart.

The black and white films, they were just one and six.

We had just this big screen up in front of the church hall

and hard chairs,

and you used to set the chairs out every Saturday afternoon for the film

and take them away again after the picture,

so keep the hall for Sunday school the next day.

They come from near and far to the films, it was very well supported.

The creamery, of course, was a focal point of the village.

The farmers all, at that stage, brought their milk in themselves.

And they used to line up, you know, right down the village,

and they got all the news, talking to each other and shouting across.

I remember the milk coming by horse and cart,

and wee grey Fergies, everything.

One of the highlights at our primary school

was the Colonel coming down to film us pupils working in the garden.

Mr Hamill was the headmaster there, and we had vegetable plots,

and I was there myself and my sister as well.

Miss Hadden was the assistant teacher and she's in the film as well.

You can pick yourself out, you know, that's the part.

I was somewhere in the middle not doing too much, you can be sure!

Well, well done, you, for hanging onto the film.

Aye, it's well done indeed, and I'm terribly glad I did do it, you know?

Now, because it rains so much,

they say that the lakes are in Fermanagh for half the year,

and the rest of the time Fermanagh is in the lakes.

Now, nobody knows that better than John Reihill.

He's spent a lifetime on his own island,

a place where ancient boats called cots

were the only way to travel when he was a boy.

I was born and raised on Inniscorkish Island,

and my family had lived there from 1882 when my grandparents married.

My father was born there, and then I was born and raised there

and lived there until seven years ago.

I was 73 when I left the island.

There was quite a community living around and we socialised together.

The cut was our highway.

We couldn't move even ourselves because we couldn't swim.

We couldn't even get across to the mainland

without a vessel of some description.

This is a replica of the old cots.

You can see that it's flat-bottomed and that it tapers up at either end.

And that it's square-ended.

And these are the oars which would have been used in the old times

to propel it along. And on the big cots, it took two men.

Actually, it could have maybe four men.

Two men sitting on each oar.

The cot was the traditional Lough Erne vessel.

It is said that it had been in use on Lough Erne for about 2,000 years,

with very little change in its structure.

We had a big cot which would be capable of carrying horses

and cows and machinery.

And then there was a lump of a cot, an in-between size.

We often heard the phrase,

"a lump of a codger" I suppose, a half-grown boy.

A wee cot then would be for passenger traffic.

Maybe a pig on it, but no bigger animals.

You'd have to have a man on the cot that would keep control

of the animals and the man in the tow boat in front, towing it.

And then you had to have somebody behind on the tail end

of the cot, with one of the big oars out to act as a rudder.

It makes me feel sad, in a sense.

I was the last islander for to leave.

Things like that are very, very important. To keep the image alive.

Because in another generation, certainly, nobody will realise

that there was such a thing as a community life on the islands.

Good memories there of a life that's gone, but not forgotten.

Thanks for those lovely images of the cattle cot.

They were filmed by a clergyman in Derrygonnelly,

the Reverend Leonard Skuce.

His family have come along to the Travelling Picture Show

to see his films on the big screen.

Michael, your dad was a vicar.

So explain to me his total passion about taking movies?

Yes, he took a variety of films of community events, parish events.

And also of the family as well. And they really are treasured moments.

Whenever my father passed away, I showed the films to the parish.

I had to show them a couple of times, because people said,

"Michael, show that again. I want to see who was in that film."

And every time you see them, we see somebody else who we hadn't seen before

and it's just like a time capsule being opened up to the public.

My father came here in 1953.

He had been a curate in Warrenpoint and this was his first

appointment as the rector of Inishmacsaint Parish Church.

He spent his whole ministry here at Inishmacsaint

and he never really ever wanted to leave it.

I remember speaking to him about the love he had for the parish

and for the people. And for the wider community as well.

So he had 30 very, very happy years

and unfortunately he died in ministry here.

He was taking films of various events.

There was the great storm here which caused

so much damage in the early 1960s.

There were massive oak trees that had fallen.

Thankfully, none of them actually hit the church.

Everybody got involved, if something needed to be done,

the whole parish were there.

Whenever the work had to be done inside the church,

the painting, old Willie Gotts, who's now long gone dead,

who could do very specialised painting of wood effects.

And there's footage of Willie painting the doors.

The festival was a very, very important event in the calendar.

It was great. Great fun.

-Three-legged race, and the sack-race.

-Aye.

-And tug-of-war!

-And tug-of-war!

-That was great!

-I can hardly believe we done it!

-True enough!

-True enough!

-Yeah.

-No, we were young then, we were fit for anything!

-Yeah!

-Weren't we?

-True!

-We were.

-True, true.

I didn't look that well, because my backside stuck out!

THEY LAUGH

-But I kept smiling!

-Yes.

-I kept pulling!

I was behind Mabel.

Mabel was in front, you see, and I was behind her.

I wore a pinkish top, it was made of wool and I knit that myself.

And a pair of trousers.

-Because we all had to wear trousers, pulling the tug-of-war.

-Aye.

-Yes.

Mabel kept shouting at me, "Go on, pull a bit more!"

But I couldn't do any more!

That would have been all I remember about it.

-And there was somebody shouting at us.

-Tommy Baillie.

-Yes.

-Basil was about, too.

-Yes.

It was all about a bit of fun and there were all ages and shapes

and sizes of ladies, really!

They had to have a bit of weight about them,

to be any good at tug-of-war.

So I'd better not mention any names!

-True, we had weight, now.

-We had. But we won!

-We did.

-We won.

-Aye, we didn't even get a medal!

-No!

-And now they're firing medals out to everybody!

-They are!

It was a time where people were willing to participate.

People could entertain themselves.

People sometimes feel a bit shy about being photographed.

I think my mother was very comfortable in front

of a camera where her husband was taking photographs with the family.

My recollection of my mother was always being there.

Whenever I came home from school, you were always guaranteed Mum was at home.

You see loved ones who have now passed away.

I think it makes it ever more precious, as well.

You know, it means much more to us

now to see that they really had good, enjoyable times.

The Reverend Skuce's legacy will long be remembered because when

his films are shown locally, the amount of interest is phenomenal.

I heard people, you know, talking to themselves in whispers, you know?

"There's so-and-so. There's so-and-so."

And, you know, trying to recognise people.

My grandfather, Tommy, was the man that organised the tug-of-war team,

the women's tug-of-war team in the Fun Day for the parish.

This was the heart of the countryside,

Enniskillen was a very long distance away for entertainment.

The parish came together for a day out and a day's craic

and this was the way it was done.

Now, I have to admit that until today, I didn't know that there

was such a big tradition of home movie-making in Enniskillen.

And even if you've never heard of the name Raymond McCartney,

I promise you, you will have seen one of his films.

Raymond was a very successful businessman and hotelier

in Enniskillen and he spent a lifetime filming local people and events.

And it was an ironic twist of fate that sent his film

right around the world.

Dad was going down just to video the parade, as he did every year

then, because he loved the colour, he loved the music, he loved the bands.

Those video images went all across the world.

Dad went into automatic pilot and just moved with the camera

and went towards where the smoke was.

And he didn't realise at the time what he was actually doing.

It affected him deeply.

Deeply.

When I think of Dad and the camera,

Poppy Day is the last thing I think of.

I think of the fun things.

As we grew up, there was a camera there always.

No matter where you saw Dad, there was a camera.

He either had a camera bag or he had the camera on his shoulders.

Thank goodness, over the years, the cameras got smaller,

so they weren't as obvious.

But at the start, the cameras were massive.

Through Terry and I's life, the video was there.

It's all documented, from birthday parties and christenings,

right up to confirmations.

Everything.

Dad loved horses.

He knew how to ride, he could gallop, he could do all of that then.

And if he didn't, he made it look as if he did!

They would have scared me, now, they were always big,

but Dad would get on and then put me on in front or whatever, then.

And I always felt safe then, when he was there.

At one stage, Mum was running Lough Erne Hotel

and dad had bought Killyhevlin.

So, Mum was running one, and Dad was running the other.

Dad was not a fisherman,

but recognised the potential that was there and would have gone out

of his way to organise competitions

and things to have fishermen come down.

They would have fished all day. Videos then, you can see their catch.

They're hauling fish in left, right and centre.

There seemed to be no end of fish those days.

Again, they would come back in and weigh the fish,

and there was a whole fun made out of that.

Some of the fisherman might have been from England,

a lot of them were and they would have come and had a great time.

Of course the Irish hospitality was there too, don't forget.

Then they would have gone back to England

or wherever they were from and said,

"You've got to come to Fermanagh because it's brilliant."

Every August as part of the Vintage Car Club weekend

we chose a charity.

Dad loved the community and wanted to be involved in that.

On the Friday night everybody got all dressed up,

especially the line dancers then at Jail Square we all took in.

We danced, we had our boots on,

we had our hats on, you'd the skirts on.

You would have had maybe 80 to 100 people all line dancing.

Everybody doing the same thing,

all trying to outdo each other and it was fabulous.

The atmosphere in Enniskillen was electric.

When we were young, Dad would have filmed anything.

It didn't have to be a special occasion,

it didn't have to be a special day.

Those memories, if it wasn't on video, it's lost for ever.

Caroline, you and I met at the Killyhevlin Hotel

many, many moons ago. I actually knew your husband Raymond.

Why do you think Raymond was

so passionate about taking all of these movies?

He was out all over the place taking pictures and then, of course,

bringing them home to us, the family,

and saying, "Come here and sit down.

"You have to see this. This is history in the making."

I think he was into tourism in a great way.

He felt by taking the videos and the footage,

that it might go further afield and bring more people to Fermanagh.

He would say, "Someday you'll all look at these

"and other people will too." And now, as we see, it's happening.

People are watching, just like today.

And he'll be sitting smiling.

And that's just about it from Enniskillen on a day

when we've had the privilege

of watching some really precious family films

made by men who had a joy in placing all those memories on celluloid.

So, it's time to pack up our tent and hit the highway again.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd