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The Fred Holmes Collection

The recently discovered Fred Holmes Collection (FHC) consists of 80 pieces of ephemera, 75 pieces of correspondence, six posters, and over 100 original glass photograph plates. Originally collected by Fred Holmes in his role as an early projectionist and manager for Jasper Redfern, the Collection includes rare programmes, handbills and adverts, all gathered in a career that started in Yorkshire but eventually came to span the length of England. Its materials date from as early as 1899, with the greater part relating to a range of cine-variety shows presented by Jasper Redfern in the early Edwardian period in and around Sheffield and Derby. The Collection was eventually inherited by Holmes’ great nephew, Roger Waterhouse, and the materials remained with him until he was approached in the course of a wider study into development of early cinema in Yorkshire (Walsh 2011). The Fred Holmes Collection is remarkable in many ways, if only for demonstrating that rare and early material relating to the pioneering days of the moving image can still be found. Taken as a whole, this material reveals the breadth of venues and forms that the cinematograph integrated into, and highlights the wide reach early itinerant shows found outside the major urban centres in the North of England. The Collection now sits beside other materials held by the National Fairground Archive that highlight the intermediality of early film and its close relationship to other forms of entertainment culture at the turn of the century. Alongside the handbills, posters and programmes from fairground booths, variety venues and town halls, the Fred Holmes Collection provides an important archival resource for the early days of moving picture exhibition culture in the United Kingdom. While the predominance of material in the FHC focuses on Redfern’s profile as an exhibitor, it also cast new light on his position as an active and local filmmaker. Early trade cards advertising Jasper Redfern’s Animated Pictures include a single frame of film, the last known remnant from a prolific if short production history (Figure 1). With Redfern advertising that films were ‘taken to order’, we can see immediate parallels to the firm of Mitchell & Kenyon in Blackburn, albeit with exhibition rather than production becoming the mainstay of the business (Toulmin 2006). Redfern chose not to wholesale his material, as the Lancashire company did; he focused instead on promoting a combined film production and exhibition package, with almost all his titles kept exclusively for his own shows. The FHC now illustrates how Redfern brought his exclusive and bespoke cinematograph show to public halls, musical halls, and numerous private shows and functions. Where local pictures and sporting titles dominated the programme in Early Popular Visual Culture Vol. 10, No. 3, August 2012, 299–311