Nostalgia: Remembering 1951 Festival of Britain in Leeds, York and Hull

12th May 1951: Visitors stroll outside the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank, London during the Festival of Britain.. (Photo by Frank Harrison/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

It was a national exhibition in the heart of London which the Labour Government promoted as a beacon of change for a postwar Britain. But the optimism of the Festival of Britain 70 years ago was felt far beyond the capital.

While the Bradford playwright JB Priestley was sending the whole thing up in Festival at Farbridge, his comic novel about a small town putting on its own celebration, irony was absent in the Yorkshire cities that entered into the intended spirit.

This very week in 1951, a travelling exhibition could be seen on Woodhouse Moor in Leeds, while Hull mounted a naval event and York revived its medieval tradition of Mystery Plays, dormant since Tudor times. And a race to bring TV to the North meant that those with sets didn’t even have to leave the house to see the highlights.

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17th April 1951: A locomotive constructed for the Indian Government Railways by the North British Locomotive Company of Glasgow, on show at the Festival of Britain on London's South Bank. The train will be sent to India as soon as the Festival ends. (Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

12th May 1951: The River Thames curving past the Dome of Discovery, Festival Hall and Skylon during the 1951 Festival of Britain. (Photo by Central Press/Getty Images)

Nostalgia: Remembering 1951 Festival of Britain in Leeds, York and Hull

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