Home > Farming > Archive Film     Boxted Farming Scenes 1925 Film context by Philip Butcher East Anglian Film Archive In the early 1920s, the first home movie film cameras became available, and those that could afford this latest piece of technology, made their own home movies. Some were just the family at home, some were holidays that the family wanted to record, and others were what we would call today documentaries. In 1925 James Blewitt, of Boxted Hall farm near Colchester, made a record of the farm, throughout the farming year. During thrashing time, which usually took place in winter when the corn which had stood in stacks since harvest was thrashed out so that the farmer could sell it at the best price at the corn exchange, many farm workers gathered to work the thrashing machine, sack the corn, work on the stacks, collect the chaff, load the wagon, and attend the steam traction engine. This was hard work, which went on from early morning until dusk. In the film of Boxted Farming Scenes the men are also seen lining up before the camera, and, at the command of Mr Blewitt behind the camera, removing their caps. Everyone wore some form of headgear at that time. This film is also notable because it records the first use of a tractor on the farm, an event which marked the gradual decline in the use of heavy horses which eventually all but disappeared from Essex farms in the 1950s.