An old video clip of female swimmers breaking inches-thick ice on the top of a Hampstead Heath bathing pond in 1931 has been uploaded to Youtube for the first time.

More than one million minutes of archived black-and-white news clips were uploaded to the video sharing website today to make historical news content more accessible to the public.

One video captures a group of female swimmers going for a freezing dip in one of the Heath’s bathing ponds in 1931.

As a few plucky swimmers dive in, one women is heard shouting: “Come on in, it’s lovely!”

Tony Ghilchick, of the Heath and Hampstead Society, said: “That still happens of course, on Christmas Day sometimes.”

The videos were uploaded by news agency Associated Press and newsreel archive Movietone on their Youtube accounts in the largest ever upload of historical footage on the website.

Watch more video clips on Movietone’s channel and on the Associated Press Archive channel.