Beautiful Vintage Color Snapshots of London and Leeds in the 1970s

After studying at Hornsey College of Art in North London, Peter Mitchell travelled to Leeds to visit friends. He took a job as a lorry driver with Sun Electrical in 1973. “I delivered electrical items such as fridges and heaters to factories and homes all over the city,” said Mitchell. “For a couple of years, every day I went all round Leeds.”

“I’ve always thought Leeds was a very philistine place. I’ve been taking that back over the last two or three years, I have to say. But I came to Leeds in 1970, and I remember all those gable ends that you saw from the train coming into Leeds, whole lines of them to the railway edge.” Mitchell expressed. “This is what amazed me about Leeds, coming from the metropolis where you could only see little bits of north London or south London, but Leeds you could see in a whole day. And I got the impression that Leeds’ time was up, that it was being demolished all over the place — which it was.”

Take a look at these beautiful vintage color snapshots of London and Leeds taken by Mitchell in the 1970s:

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70 Fascinating Vintage Color Photographs That Capture Life in Leeds in the 1970s

A glimpse into 1970s Leeds is captured on these nostalgic images which show a very different city to the one we know. The photographs were taken by Eric Miles.

Shoppers crossing Lands Lane.

Opposite the Parkinson Building on Woodhouse Lane - Austicks for stationery, Ainsley's for sandwiches.

Pedestrianisation - looking towards Betty's Cafe - and Peter Lord if you want some Clarks Shoes.

Kirkgate Market still covered in grime. And new premises for the Leeds not-so-Permanent in the long run Building Society. High & Mighty on the extreme left and Thom's.

Entrance to Kirkgate Market with its wonderful Victorian facade.

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“Roundhay Garden Scene” (1888) – The Oldest Known Film Footage to Exist

Roundhay Garden Scene is the oldest surviving film in existence and is considered by most to be the first movie ever made using a single lens camera.

It is a short silent black and white movie and was filmed and directed by French inventor Louis Le Prince. The film was made at Oakwood Grange in Roundhay, Leeds on October 14 1888.

It features Adolphe Le Prince (son), Sarah Whitley (mother-in-law), Joseph Whitley (father-in-law) and Harriet Hartley. They are all seen walking around in the Oakwood Grange garden of Joseph and Sarah Whiteley. Curiously, Sarah Whiteley is seen walking backwards as she turns around and Joseph Whiteley’s coat tails are flying as he also turns. Sadly, Sarah Whitley died ten days after this scene was filmed.

The First Movie Camera with a Single Lens

The Roundhay Garden Scene was recorded on an Eastman Kodak 1885 paper-based photographic film through Louis Le Prince's single lens combination camera projector Type-1 MkII. According to his son Alphonse Le Prince it was recorded at 12 frames per second.

Louis Le Prince's Single Lens Combination Camera Projector Type-1 MkII (LPCCP Type-1 MkII) showing the back or rear view with two rolls of paper-based film on spools.

The First Movie Goes Digital

This digital version of the first movie, was produced by the National Museum of Photography Film and Television and has 52 frames with a run time of 2.11 seconds at 24.64 frame/s (the modern cinematographic frame-rate).

It switches the left side and the right side from the 1931 National Science Museum copy (seen below) in which the house is incorrectly shown on the right side of the scene. This is because paper parts on the left side of the film, reduced visibility. By having the distortion on the right side, a more pleasing effect for viewing is created.

Louis Le Prince's Roundhay Garden Scene 1888 frames copy of 1931 from the National Science Museum London showing 20 frames of film.

Louis Le Prince

Louis Le Prince has been heralded as the ‘Father of Cinematography’ since 1930 for having filmed the first movie ever on paper film using a single lens camera.

A Frenchman, who also worked in the United Kingdom and the United States, Louis conducted his ground-breaking work in 1888 in the city of Leeds, England. This was several years before the work of competing inventors such as the Lumière brothers and Thomas Edison.

A photography of Louis Le Prince, inventor of motion pricture film. Circa 1885. Courtesy of Armley Mills Industrial Museum, Leeds.

(via First Movie)

Fascinating Portraits of Factories and Small Shop Owners in Leeds in the 1970s

Born in 1943, Peter Mitchell joined the Ministry of Transport as a trainee straight from school, but thought better of it and went to study art at Hornsey College of Art in north London instead, specializing in silk-screen printing. Then, in 1973, he traveled to Leeds to visit friends living in a squat in the city's northern suburb of Headingley, and chose to stay. "I set up a silk-screen studio in the basement of where I was living," he says.

He has lived in Leeds ever since, and for most of that time has been earning his living as a graphic designer. But to pay the rent in 1973, he got a job as a lorry driver with a company called Sun Electrical. For the compulsive I-Spyer, it was a dream position. "I delivered electrical items such as fridges and heaters to factories and homes all over the city," he says. "For a couple of years, every day I went all round Leeds."

Eric Massheder, dripping-refinery worker, Vulcan Street, spring 1975.

Ready Mixed Concrete Ltd, Elland Road, summer 1977.

Mr Pearson, steam-grab driver, Victoria Bridge, spring 1974.

Mrs Collins and Mrs Clayton, Robinsons' Famous Fisheries, Beck Road, summer 1974.

Mr Reuben, Rugby Cabinet Co Ltd, Lucas Court, summer 1974.

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