The Master of Bankdam

Having lived all my life in the area the novel and film is set in I was eager to see this film and found it mostly very good and realistic with good characterisations and most quite acceptable Broad Yorkshire speech. Broad Yorkshire having its glottal stop 't' and its silent 'h' roots in the Hebrew language spoken by the wandering Israelites that became the Anglo-Saxon-Jute-Viking that populated the Yorkshire area before and after the Roman period. One jarring exception was the scene where the mill owner's son confronts father of pregnant girlfriend and the father speak quite posh English and the son Broad Yorkshire! Few scenes in the mill apart from the long one concerning the 'milling' of new woollen cloth needing longer time in the milling machine. The woollen milling machine being driven by belts off a steam engine and having two wide cogs close together through which the cloth was fed in order to make the fibres mat together to give strength and smoothness. Helmshore Musuem has similar machine. The scene of the mill collapsing due to the urge to install extra looms is good and seems to have been filmed in a genuine mill being demolished. The following scene of mayor and millowner's son colluding in covering up the reason for the collapse shows how business was and is done in small town business. The patriarch with his apparent Broad Yorkshire was played by Tom Walls who being born in Northamtonshire spoke a close version of Yorkshire's Anglo-Saxon and was therefore well able to stop his glottal and silence any aitches in his dialogue. It's well worth a watch to see real acting and a disappeared way of life.