The Yorkshire Film Archive collects, preserves, and shows film made in, or about Yorkshire. Our collections are non-fiction, dating from the 1890s to the present day, and providing a rich and visually compelling record of all aspects of lives, cultures, landscape, industries, major events and everyday activities, many of which are available to watch, free of charge, on our website.
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Spooner Automatic Bread Plant
Maybe the second best invention after sliced bread, the machines that dry the bread that helps them to be easily sliced!
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Overview
Watch as tasty looking loaves of bread pass along conveyer belts and into tins, in a captivating demonstration of technology at work in baking loaves of bread. This promotional film for Spooner, a company making drying equipment based in Ilkley, was made at the Associated Family Bakers factory in High Wycombe, around 1979.
This is one of many promotional films made in the post-war decades by Bradford film producers C H Wood, who are better known for films of motor sports. Spooner Industries was formed in Shipley in 1932 by William Spooner, eventually moving to Ilkley in 1951. Having worked for years as an engineer Spooner thought he could improve the technology of industrial drying equipment, starting in textiles and moving to baking after the war. He believed that having gone through his dryers bread tasted better and also had a longer shelf life. The food division was sold to Vicars in 1991, but five years later Spooners came back into the bakery industry. Both Spooners and Associated Family Bakers remain thriving businesses.
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