South Wales Valleys, 1950's. Archive film 92686

A day in the life of a valley town in Wales in the 1950's. The terraces of miner's cottages crammed into and along the valleys. Camera tracks along rows of back-to-back valleys streets. A huge detached chapel stand towering in the middle of one street. A young couple shot from behind walk down town steps. At the bottom they turn into a street and catch a single-decker bus. The bus driver is shot at work. Close-up: He is bespectacled and wears a smart peaked cap. A sequence of shots from the viewpoint of his cap shows narrow, tight streets and corners. The bus then leaves from town uphill. Another (double-decker) bus steers round tight bends as it climbs down the hill. It is seen on the crown of the hill, then descends into another valley town with tight streets. Here a terrace of houses rises in steps in typical Welsh valley style. A phlegmatic bus passenger smokes a pipe in the double-decker bus as it too winds into town. Then it crosses a railway with a goods train passing on a viaduct above and behind it (lovely shot). A group of passengers in cloth caps includes a man lighting a cigarette. Miners traipse into a colliery off the bus. Traffic passes along an arterial road with modern factories. Inside the factory people walk past machinery, then part to start the day's work. Outside again, a young man in coat and carrying a briefcase hurries along a village street. A class at Technical College. A quick sequence now shows others starting the working day: A miner collects his lamp from a long row; woman sits down at a working bench in the factory; man hurries breathless across another village street; man in overalls greets his female assistant and takes a working panel from her; miners in a group leave the lamp room for the winding cage; manruns through a pleasant garden and up the front steps of an old mansion, now the Technical College; indoors he enters a classroom and sits at his desk; a middle-aged teacher lectures on the structure of coalfields while man takes out his pen and opens a notebook. The lecturers hand points at a diagram of the 'Gellygaer Basin' on the blackboard; in the colliery the cage packed with men drops and disappears down the pit; then the wheels at the top of the winding mechanism once seen spinning. Men at benches in a workshop; a man working with a retort and Bunsen burner (or similar); men in overalls working on propellers and an enormous aero-engine; spinning machinery in a textile factory; brad baking; a man laying out freshly cleaned gloves at a dry cleaners; seamstresses at work and women packing gloves; a sort of cutting machine; engines and trucks at a major (possibly chemical?) works; woman working on electrical circuits and man entering data on his panel.