Most Viewed From Mitchell & Kenyon

Female graduates and gents sporting spectacular Edwardian whiskers take part in Birmingham’s first Degree Day ceremony.

This film is part of the Mitchell and Kenyon collection - an amazing visual record of everyday life in Britain at the beginning of the twentieth century.

The Lillywhites take on the Wolves at Deepdale, watched by a large crowd and the club mascot.

All the fun of the Whitsuntide Fair in Edwardian Preston.

In 1901 people in Belfast paid their tram drivers in carrots.

Turn of the century rugby league.

Kidnapping by Indians is a 1899 British silent short Western film, made by the Mitchell and Kenyon film company, shot in Blackburn, England. It is believed to be the first Western film, pre-dating Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery by four years.

Footage from the dawn of film taken by Mitchell and Kenyon in North England, 1901.

The ornate pavilions of cinematographs, boxing booths and menageries at Hull Fair.

Bustling scenes show Edwardian Derry-Londonderry before industrialisation took hold.

A flood of Lancashire cotton workers and their children at the end of another shift.

A temperance society decries the demon drink on the streets of Edwardian Manchester.

The biggest English comedy hit of the year. The scene is laid on an English estate at the edge of a pond. A couple of laborers discover, protruding from the water a pair of female legs. They hasten to the rescue, secure a bench and a long plank so as to get out over the water to the point where the legs are sticking up. Just as they complete their preparations a policeman runs up and insists on going out to the rescue of the female in distress.

This fascinating record of Edwardian Nottingham was filmed from the driver's platform of a tram on a single journey through the city centre between its two main stations. The sequence follows the same route as today's Nottingham Express Transit tramway, taking the viewer along Listergate and Wheelergate into Old Market Square before turning right into Long Row and on into Queen Street.

The annual championship meeting of England's premier athletics association.

Troops play up for the camera in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle.

Rugby league footage from Mitchell & Kenyon.

These short scenes were filmed in January 1902 in and around Wexford's Bull Ring market, capturing an array of local characters, including a cheery fishwife. Children and members of the Royal Irish Constabulary mingle with the traders and customers. The Mayor of Wexford, in his official regalia, appears with his daughters. The films were later shown at the Theatre Royal, Wexford. This film was shot during a two-day visit to the South East Ireland town by Mitchell and Kenyon cameraman Louis De Clercq. The man in the pale hat seen walking arm-in-arm with another man towards the camera may be Hugh McCarthy, manager of Wexford's White Hotel. The same man reappears later, alongside the mayor and his daughters.

It's not easy to view these beguiling scenic shots without burdening them with our knowledge of history. The pivotal site of Irish emigration, Queenstown witnessed countless departures (like that of the liner glimpsed here), each touched by excitement, apprehension and, all too often, tragedy. Previously Cove, it was later renamed Cobh by a newly independent state purging itself of Britishness.

A group of miners (including a sole black worker) exits the colliery gates.