A Barnet business start up that changed the world

Friday, 20 November 2015 11:41

A Barnet business start up that changed the world

Written by Nick Jones

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Clovelly Cottage. A commemorative plaque was fixed to the right of the door, but now only the mounts remain

It is not well enough known that British cinema was born in Chipping Barnet 120 years ago. Moving images were then as revolutionary as virtual reality seems now.

Clovelly Cottage, 19 Park Road, was the home from 1893 to 1895 of film pioneer Birt Acres (1854-1918) and backdrop to Britain’s first movie, Incident at Clovelly Cottage (March 1895).

An electrical engineering colleague of Acres, Robert W. Paul, had pirated Edison’s Kinetoscope (which was unpatented in Britain) and needed films for it. Birt was then manager of Elliott & Sons, manufacturers of Barnet Dry Plates, whose workshops adjoined his house.

He filmed Incident outside his front door featuring his wife, baby (in pram) and a friend.

Acres patented the camera, causing a split with Paul. Later that year he established The Northern Photographic Works, Britain’s first moving picture production company, at 45 Salisbury Road.

On 10 January 1896, The Barnet Press reported the first British projected movie performance (as opposed to earlier single-viewer peep-shows) by Acres to members and friends of the local Lyonsdown Photographic Society.

Clip from 'Incident at Closely Cottage'

On 14 January, he repeated it for the Royal Photographic Society – five weeks before the Lumière Brothers’ more famous first public Cinématographe performances in London.

Birt patented several other new cinematographic techniques including a projector, the Kineopticon (1896), and the first home movie camera, the Birtac (1898).

He took premises behind the High Street in Nesbitt’s Alley to manufacture and sell them, and examples survive in Barnet Museum.

It is probably no coincidence that around the corner, in Bath Place (next to Brake Shear House), was yet another photographic business, Charles Hodson, John Swain & Son (photo-engravers).

They were part of a remarkable flowering of high-tech industries in early 20th century Barnet that also included Elliott’s, Watson & Sons (optical and scientific instruments) in Bells Hill, and the massive Dental Manufacturing Co. (makers of everything from pump chairs to false teeth) in what is now the Alston Works.

Chipping Barnet’s history proves the importance of sites like Brake Shear House for small specialist businesses. Just as Apple and Google began life in Californian garages, major industries grew from start-ups and creative enterprises in and around our town centre.

Yet today all over the South-East, commercial premises are being converted into flats and vacant land built over by houses.

Since the government relaxed planning controls, Barnet Council has been required to approve more than 100 office-to-residential conversions, including 40 fully occupied offices, more than any other borough.

We certainly need more housing – but we also badly need space for the start-up and creative businesses of today and tomorrow.

Published in Barnet History

1 comment

Comment Link Tuesday, 18 August 2020 13:16 posted by Raymond Peak
Strange how many past connections exist within my lietime, and the Societys ,post re the demolition of Breakspeare House.
My maternal Grandfather,a compositer worked for the Barnet Press, he died in 1918 his Obituary suggests of the Spanish Flu,his daugter Connie was to join John Swain,s and became a loyal menber of their team, returning to Swains after raising four children and fondly speking of Mr Holt by his christian name,she made lielong friends there from the30s to 60s.
Connies mother Edith,worked as a domestic servant,for Birt Acres in Park Rd,prior to her marriage in 1900...Elliots being where Mr Acres then worked, next door to the Barnet Press, where her future husband worked.
Swains brought printers from Clerkenwell to Barnet,one such man John Cooper, was co.opted to the Thatched Barn to do secret War work,his son Barry later became a Printer,who took over Brunswick Press, in the Church Passage, before moving to Nesbitts Alley still running Brunswick Press until recently moving to Potters Bar. This was the same Building that Birt Acres once occupied in the early 1900s
How many Barnet families had Swains reject copies of the Chinese Girl byTrececoff hanging in their front rooms.......l phoned Barry Cooper ago.my old friend, on the day we started work almost 60years ago.
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