Fabulous fun during a holiday in Dover around 1955

This vintage 8mm home movie shows a family holiday in Dover, a seaside town on the coast of Kent, that was taken in about 1955. As well as some views around Dover Castle, the family had fun on the beach & in the sea, and also filmed some scenes around a holiday camp where, I believe, they were staying.

The Holiday in Dover 8mm home movie

The film, which is embedded below, was converted to digital using my home constructed telecine machine and then edited with Adobe Premiere Elements. Although I have a copy of Davini Resolve, I find for many 8mm movie projects Adobe Premiere is a much faster system for just adding titles, fixing a few exposure issues and adding some sharpening, so that’s my go-to software for these films.

What I found out about this film

With most of my 8mm home movie films, I have no information about the contents other than possibly a title written on the reel, so I need to try to work out where scenes were shot and glean any other information from the film itself. This film was no different, all I had was a title, “Dover”. I’ve made an assumption about the date of the film based on the fashions and content; I may be wrong, but probably not by much.

I’ve assumed that the castle shown in the opening sequence is Dover castle, and this is followed by some scenes along the coast of Dover, with the white cliffs featuring prominently. The first shots of the family seem to be when the camera concentrates on what, at the time, would be called a courting couple having a kiss.

I find this scene quite interesting – It looks to me as if the older man in the scene is the father of the boy. There seems to be quite a familial likeness, but the older man seems quite embarrassed by his son’s behaviour – what do you think?

Anyway, after this, the film moves on to some scenes shot at the beach with typical holiday fun, which I assume was taken somewhere on the beach and in the sea at Dover. This is some of the most colourful footage of the entire home movie – probably because it was filmed in good light and the camera’s lens was stopped down.

The final section of the film was taken at a holiday camp with a typically 1950s beauty pageant. Initially I assumed this was a Butlins or Pontins, but it seems it’s more likely it was a smaller company called Maddiesons that operated in that area.

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