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A town in shock. Here’s Hartlepool the day after the Bombardment and it was all recorded on this rare cine film.

Footage has been shared with the Hartlepool Mail. It shows the town in the aftermath of the German strikes on Cleveland Street.

The Imperial German Navy shelled Hartlepool and West Hartlepool for 40 minutes on December 16, 1914, not long after the start of the First World War.

When it was all over, locals came out of their homes to examine the extent of damage and it was captured on film in this newsreel. It shows a crowd of people in Cleveland Street looking at a house where the roof and upper storey have collapsed.

The rare footage of the Bombardment of Hartlepool. Photo: North East Film Archive.

Note the men in bowler hats and a soldier carrying a long Lee Enfield rifle. He may well have been a member of the 18th Battalion Durham Light Infantry which was posted in the area.

Around 130 people died and hundreds more were wounded in the onslaught which began at 8.10am on December 16, 108 years ago.

Among those to die were sisters Annie and Florence Kay who were in their family home on the Headland when a shell hit.

Rare cine footage of Hartlepool in the 1960s - from the Seaton carousel to a min...

A still from the footage. Photo: North East Film Archive.

The footage comes to us courtesy of the North East Film Archive which has a huge catalogue of over 70,000 items of film and video tape.

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

Found in a box of broken cameras

The nitrate newsreel ‘Attack on the Hartlepools’ film was a chance discovery in a cardboard box full of broken cameras and lenses which was found at Tynemouth Market.

Local children take a look at the damage caused by the German bombardment in 1914. Photo: North East Film Archive.

It was bought by Mark Simmons, Hartlepool Borough Council’s curator of museum development at the time, for his personal art and sculpture projects.

The film, wrapped in old greaseproof paper, was found at the bottom of the box and later donated to the North East Film Archive.

It was digitised as part of the National Lottery Heritage Funded North East on Film project.

Our thanks go once again to NEFA which has shared many great pieces of cine footage with us.

If you have cine film of Hartlepool in the past, we would love to hear from you.

Get in touch by emailing [email protected]

The day after the 1914 Bombardment - rare cine footage captures the devastation of the attack on Hartlepool

Found in a box of broken cameras