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What a reminder it is of a day at the seaside in times gone by and it comes to us courtesy of the excellent North East Film Archive.

NEFA has a huge catalogue of over 70,000 items of original film, video tape, and born-digital material.

Its team has painstakingly taken on the task of preserving, cataloguing, and digitising these vital collections of reminders of our past.

A still from the film by Hartlepool man Walter Gowland which has been shared with the Mail by the North East Film Archive.

The Seaton film shows Hartlepool man Peter Gowland when he was a youngster and the footage, taken in 1966, was recorded by his talented dad, Walter Gowland.

Walter’s cine making skills were so good, he would professionally put captions on the footage which was recorded on Super 8 film.

Peter said: “One of his great passions was photography and he used to do stills. People used to invite him to do their weddings.

"He moved in to Super 8 when it came in and he used to do all his own editing.”

A scene from the North East Film Archive clip showing Seaton Carew in 1966.

Walter would even get plastic lettering which he cut into shapes so he could add captions to his films.

These days, Peter is a well known figure in Hartlepool. He is chairman of the Hartlepower charity and said: “My dad was interested in so many things including still photography and movies.

"He was one of the first people in Hartlepool to have a movie camera and when he went anywhere on the buses he would take a camera and a cine camera.”

The clip we have featured is one small section of a brilliant 30-minute cine look at Hartlepool life in 1966.

On the miniature train at Seaton Carew. Photo: North East Film Archive.

The longer 1966 film, which is available on the NEFA website, shows various events taking place around Hartlepool and Seaton Carew from the corporation carniva to water skiing, street parades and a fair.

Walter’s work has been passed on for posterity to NEFA. It is one example of NEFA's documentation of all aspects of North East life.

The archive operates over two regional sites: Yorkshire Film Archive, based in York, and North East Film Archive, based in Middlesbrough.

Interested people can find out more about its work and collections by visiting the archive’s website at https://www.yfanefa.com

The registered charity also has a Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/YFAandNEFA

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Rare cine footage of Hartlepool in the 1960s - from the Seaton carousel to a mini train ride

Support your Mail and become a subscriber today.

Enjoy unlimited access to all of our news and sport, see fewer ads, experience faster load times, test your brain with daily puzzles and get access to exclusive newsletters.

Your support for our journalism means we can continue telling Hartlepool’s stories for generations to come. Click here to subscribe - and click here to get a snapshot of the Mail’s news and sport to your inbox through our email newsletters.