The Flickering Light – An Evening of Archive Film featuring Wiltshire, WW1 and the decades after the Armistice

Windrose Rural Media Trust brings its collection of popular archive films to Devizes Corn Exchange with a unique show reflecting local life in Wiltshire and surrounding counties before and during World War I, as well as on into the decades following the Armistice in 1918

From farming and industry, to high days and holidays, and the never far away military presence on Salisbury Plain, the show depicts how we lived during those inter-war years.

This fascinating selection of rarely seen archive films is accompanied by live folk song and traditional music from West Country musician and singer Amanda Boyd.

Windrose Rural Media Trust has been discovering and saving old cine films of rural life in Wiltshire, Somerset and Dorset for 34 years. These films are a true window on the past; the nearest thing to living history that exists.

Films include:

Pre World War 1 and life during the conflict…

• Life in Warminster in 1909
• Troop activity in Devizes in around 1912/1913
• Holidays in wartime Minehead and Weymouth
• Propaganda film of Iwerne Minster showing rural life in 1918
• Beyond War and into The Future… to the 1930s…

Salisbury and District Band of Hope parade from 1921

• Farming the land in the 1920s
• Wiltshire Industry featuring Westinghouse in the inter-war years
• Military raining on Salisbury Plain in the 1920s

Beyond War and into The Future… to the 1940s…

• Malmesbury Carnival celebrations in 1937
• Wiltshire railways in the 1930s
• Wiltshire School of Flying in 1937
• Trips to the seaside – Swanage in the 1930s

The Return to War…

Evacuees in Salisbury, Civil Defence in Swindon and Wiltshire’s Dad’s army on parade