Some lucky members of the Kindling team have started making a short film about Greater Manchester's food heritage.
The 20 minute documentary, to be fronted by Kindling's Chris, charts how the archetypal industrial city has been fed over the last few hundred years. From a collection of villages and market towns to the urban metropolis of 5 million people it is today, we are attempting to tell the changing story of how the city has been fed from 1750 to the present day.
The story looks at the influence of transport links: canals, railways and eventually motorways; the benefits that the co-op movement brought, poverty of 1812 and the Corn Laws, starvation and the resulting riots etc.
One such story is of Hannah Smith a married woman with eight children who was hung in June 1812 for taking 2lbs butter from the cart of a seller and forcing him to sell at less than the usual price.
Over a week of filming we've interviewed:
- Gillian Lonergan, Head of Heritage Resources of the Co-operative College about the Rochdale Pioneers at the Co-op museum in Rochdale.
- Syd Dorman, who grew food on Ashton Moss up until 1990's and who campaigned to save Moss from the developers
- Phil Kelly - a market-stall holder on Ashton Market, who's family also farmed on the moss and produced the famous Ashton Moss Celery.
- Gill Morris & Louise Bridle, who's family fled from the famine in Ireland and were one of the first to drain Ashton Moss
- Chris Leah and his colleagues from the Wooden Canal Boat Society.
- Local historian Micheal Herbert from the Working Class History Museum.
- As well as the hard working growers at Glebelands, Sale and the Moss Brook growers on Chat Moss.
Locations have included Manchester City Centre at lunchtime and the Old Smithfield Market in the Northern Quarter, Castlefields to highlight the role of the industrial transport networks; the Co-op Museum in Rochdale - the birth place of the Co-operative movement, traditional farming areas like the mosses off the East Lanc's Road, Ashton Market and we even took a narrow boat ride at Portland Basin in Tameside.
The film will be peppered with old photos and film footage from the Co-op Archive and Manchester City Council's local Image Collection.
The documentary is part of Kindling's ForgottenFields project and based on all the information collated by Fiona Dunk over the last two years
The film would not have been possible with out the professional input and hard work of Abi Mcloughlin (an ex-BBC camera woman) and funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund.