‘Artist mill-hand in film studio’: Harold Blackburn, post-war British film production and the making of The Master of Bankdam (1947)

When The Master of Bankdam went into production at the Nettlefold film studios at Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, in the summer of 1946, Harold Blackburn was in attendance. Blackburn was a millhand-cum-artist from Huddersfield, Yorkshire – where location shooting for The Master of Bankdam had taken place – and had been engaged to act as a technical advisor on the film. Blackburn helped producers create an ‘authentic’ vision of the Victorian woollen industry using his knowledge of working practices, costume and accent. But he also passed information from Walton back to Huddersfield, in the form of a series of articles written for the town’s Daily Examiner newspaper which explained the role that Blackburn played in The Master of Bankdam’s production. When viewed in conjunction with a collection of sketches Blackburn made during his time at Nettlefold, the articles also paint a detailed picture of a British film studio in the immediate post-war period, and especially of the people who worked in it. As a sympathetic and observant outsider granted prolonged access to the spaces of cinematic production, Blackburn’s record provides fascinating insight into the practicalities of filmmaking while also demonstrating how ideas about it circulated in contemporary British film culture.