The South West Film and Television Archive (SWFTA) is the regional film archive for the South West of England. Established in 1993, SWFTA's core collection comprises of the combined programme libraries of Westward Television and TSW (Television South West). The archive also cares for a significant number of donated film collections, both amateur and professional, dating back to the early 1900s.
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Bere Alston Carnival
A May Day procession through the village
From the collection of:
Overview
The May Day Procession in Bere Alston travels to the local market town of Tavistock. Villagers dress up in the year of King George V’s Silver Jubilee which was celebrated on 6 May. The Fair dates from the time of the opening of the silver-lead mines. Reginald de Ferrers obtains a market and a fair in 1295 and shortly afterwards the village becomes a borough. The fair continues to this day.
The village is one of the largest in Devon and lies in the Bere peninsula between the rivers Tamar and Tavy. Its origins lie not only in the once thriving mining industry where tin, silver-lead and arsenic were extracted but also in market gardening where mainline trains to London would stop at the village to pick up locally grown produce of cherries, strawberries and daffodils destined for the capital.
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