Lockdown Lift: Do these old films take you down memory lane?

Video report by ITV News Meridian's Malcolm Shaw


A new project in Sussex is giving people the opportunity to take a look back in time.

West Sussex Unwrapped is posting old footage of our region online once a month.

It is a collaboration between Screen Archive South East and West Sussex Record Office, whose archives chronicle life dating back 1,200 years.

The footage released online includes a wedding at a country estate in Warnham near Horsham. The Lucas family celebrate with the whole village turning up to watch. 

A wedding near Horsham. Credit: Screen Archive South East

The family's wealth allowed them to hire professional filmmakers Fred Leroy Granville and his wife Peggy.  The film was shot on 35mm stock, capturing extraordinary detail.

Dr Frank Gray from Screen Archive South East said: "This is a grand affair and we're all familiar with Downtown Abbey, and this is Downtown Abbey in real life.

"The costumes, the attitudes, the way that it was organised was so similar to the way in which almost a hundred years later, it would be captured through a television drama."

Another film records the development of Crawley from a rural backwater to a huge new town; all the work of a local cameraman Gladstone E Moore.

The development of Crawley. Credit: Screen Archive South East

Wendy Walker from West Sussex Record Office said: "You can look back and think, and maybe remember your own childhood, and I think there is an element of that too. And thinking how different things were, but also there is a thread through a lot of this that gives that common feeling that things carry on - and things will carry on after the pandemic."

A new episode of West Sussex Unwrapped will go online each month till September, a unique opportunity to see how much has changed in our region, and how little.