JOURNEY TO THE WEALD OF KENT. TRADE TEST FILM NARRATED BY SIR JOHN BETJEMAN.

Sorry for the long into.... but it is well worth it!

[@reginaldmolethrasher437]

Having just left after 16 years and settled in Norfolk, this film makes me very teary-eyed. Didn't want to leave. An England dead and gone.

[@keithfarrington960]

Millions moved in to South East England and they turned it into a warehouse of worldwide humanity

[@stephenhowell5611]

Sittinghurst Castle needs re pointing

[@gyp3xp48]

Never go back to these places again. It has all changed for the worse. I love Sir John Betjeman's narration. So unique. This film was filmed in 1959 I think. A bygone age gone for ever.

[@charlesbarnett2724]

..anything with the wonderful poet lorient narrating is well worth the wait. Thank you for sharing.

[@dduck1585]

Needs a 4k film to video transfer, great upload thanks for this gem

[@barrymurphy1337]

What a lovely way to spend 20 minutes - thanks for sharing.

[@simonwells61]

My pleasure - it is truly wonderful. Modern life is indeed rubbish!

[@barrymurphy1337]

@@simonwells61 'Trade Test Transmission film' isn't a phrase that I've heard in nearly 50 years but it instantly stirred a deep memory of childhood. I just searched the BP video library listing & see that you have also uploaded Cantagallo - thank u, I shall check that out later.

[@simonwells61]

@@barrymurphy1337 It is my absolute pleasure. I adored these films as a largely stay at home child. I think if you google them they are mostly there. They took years of finding them in various film libraries, but I am pleased I did.

[@rodpettet2819]

80 year old Kentish man here now living in the Philippines. We had fantastic times growing up in Kent. A beautiful place.

[@mariontaylor7850]

How strange to see this now at 60 as I was fascinated by this film as a 9 year old when it was shown as a trade test transmission before colour tv was introduced. I saw it in black and white as we didn't get colour until the 70s. I loved the bit about Sissinghurst and was thrilled to visit it five or so years ago when I thought about the film. The red climbing rose against the red brick wall is still there and I walked through the archways shown. Very haunting to see this again so many years later.

[@simonwells61]

This echoes my own memories with the film. I visited Sissinghurst for the first time last year with the film as my reference point. Wonderful we can get to see these little gems again.

[@gerontius3]

A very similar experience to my own. Saw it a few times when I was a 9-10 year old (in black and white) and persuaded my parents to drive from Leeds to visit Sissinghurst in 1969 and again in 1971. I have a wonderful oil painting done in the South Cottage garden by an American artist. A magical place though now more "commercialized" and of course much more well known and visited than back then. I live in the USA now but have been back twice and intend to visit again.

[@stephenhardy312]

I watched it as a Trade Test Film. I was enthralled; I was 7 yo when I first saw it.

[@greedyfirstalgorithmlast26]

This Coloured Test Film is Excellent, I was a TV Radio Repair man and Amateur Radio Operator born 1949, this is from Old Tapes? Excellent as old it is and whosoever edited the video Excellent. I am drooling like a hound dog.

[@esmeephillips5888]

Betj calls the chatelaine of Sissinghurst 'Lady Nicolson'. This is a tease. She always insisted on being known by her maiden name as V. (for Vita) Sackville-West. She and her husband, Sir Harold Nicolson, disliked his surname, which they thought 'bedint', i.e. common. The Sackvilles of Knole, OTOH, were an old Kentish aristocratic family. 'Hadji' Nicolson plotted fruitlessly to become a peer and had already chosen his title, Lord Cranfield, reviving a former name in his family tree. But all he got was a lousy knighthood, for writing a rather dull life of George V, so he had to keep his vulgar surname.

[@blackandwhiterag1117]

This is truly magical and made in the decade of my boyhood. I feel that it is all part of my inheritance, which the progressives wish to destroy.

[@reginaldmolethrasher437]

Benenden Green, where my children went to school... so sad to leave it behind.

[@thesolitarycyclist9005]

Note to half timbered house owners: how much more attractive the timbers when not blacked!

[@daffyduk77]

Maybe more prone to disintegration ??

[@ghughesarch]

No, putting tar on them makes oak timbers more likely to decay ​@@daffyduk77

[@patriciawhite619]

My ancestors areas… and mine 😊

[@martinduckworth9837]

Sheer bliss!

[@munci6474]

awww...how beautiful Kent was back then...how sweet the films were...we have simular ones from germany...but these times are gone...the nature got destroyed 😞...the spirit of people surving the war was different back then, they were content with much less...these old people in the film must have been born around 1880 or so...thank you for sharing this beautifully made video 😍

[@stephenhardy312]

Norfolk is lovely also. Such a difference from the hills of the Peak District Derbyshire.

[@ianjeffery6744]

A wonderfully evocative film - Betjeman at his best! - and so relevant to this Man of Kent (born in 1951), whose parents were Weald of Kent natives...the views of the interior of Mereworth Castle are stunning - alas! no longer accessible to the public.

[@daffyduk77]

At the end, "A National Benzole Film" from the hated purveyors of "motor spirit" - anathema to anti-car Betjeman.

[@edwardhudson9851]

Sir John bought me here,thanks for posting