A New Town Story

  • A still from 'A New Town Story' (1955)
  • ID no. 3185
  • Accession no. WS 950110
Date 1955
Production Crawley Film Unit
Genre/Type
Theme Urban Life
Summary This amateur film captures the community-centred ethos in the fledgling New Town of Crawley. An accompanying script was read aloud at screenings.
Description The film opens with photographs of various settlements and with a reconstruction of a performance by a male Victorian drawing room singer. Prior to the New Town being built, a lack of adequate facilities forced residents' meetings to take place in the cramped living rooms of private homes. Work is underway on building sites across Crawley New Town - completed buildings include modern factories, houses and schools. Evening entertainment is represented by neon signs advertising the Odeon Cinema, milk and Coca-Cola. An exterior shot of the Embassy Cinema during the day is followed by images of the county library, housed in one of the town's community huts. Crawley Football Club play a soccer match and young boys dig a hole with spades loaned to them at the adventure playground. A town meeting about 'The Future' takes place at the community hall on West Green Drive. Some of the local clubs are filmed - teenage boys play table tennis and snooker at the games hall, couples practice ballroom dancing, and an amateur dramatics society rehearses. The Crawley Carnival brings the whole community together - a Royal Marines marching band leads a parade of fancy dress entrants and floats along the High Street. A model of the proposed Crawley Technical College is filmed, bringing the film to a close.

A PDF file of the accompanying script is available. Click on the 'contextual information' tab above to access this document and further related resources.
Keywords Building Construction; Buildings; Carnivals; Children; Clubs ; Communities; Leisure Time Activities; Parades; Recreational Facilities ; Urban Areas
Location
Local Crawley
Regional West Sussex
National
Credits
Commissioning body Crawley and District Community Foundation
Camera
Format
Duration 14 mins 40 secs
Viewing copy
locations		 Screen Archive South East, University of Brighton;
Region on Film DVD (extracts)
This material is protected by copyright. Contact Screen Archive South East for access details.