The Box is a major cultural and heritage attraction and archive, which opened in Plymouth’s city centre in September 2020. Its collection, formally the South West Film and Television Archive (SWFTA), is the regional film archive for the South West of England, comprising the combined programme libraries of Westward Television and Television South West (TSW). It also includes a significant number of donated film collections dating back to the early 1890s.
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The Weston-super-Mare Donkeys
Donkeys on the beach receive new hats for the summer season.
From the collection of:
Overview
Filmed on the beach at Weston-super-Mare not much is known about this film. The man and woman appear to be celebrities and present hats to the donkeys and celebrate their return to the beach at Eastertime for the season. The donkeys spend the winter on local farms in the North Somerset area. It's a family affair. The Mager family has run donkey rides on the beach by the pier since 1886 and this is likely to be Ron Mager who presents the stuffed donkey.
Ron held the licence for providing donkey rides from the 1940s. That's many donkeys and many rides and they are still a popular attraction. Traditional seaside towns have worked hard to reverse a trend in declining visitor numbers. The famous Winter Gardens Pavilion was opened in 1927 and has changed over the years to incorporate the Sovereign Shopping Centre and the building is still in community use. The final scenes of James Ivory's film The Remains of the Day based on the book by Kazuo Ishiguro were shot around the Grand Pier and the Winter Gardens but did not include any donkey rides.
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