VIDEO: Watch Queen’s grandmother Queen Mary open Henrietta Barnett Junior School in 1938
Queen Mary officially opens Henrietta Barnett School's junior branch in Hampstead Garden Suburb. Picture: Associated Press/Movietone - Credit: Archant
Historic video footage uploaded to Youtube for the first time shows the Queen’s grandmother opening a Hampstead Garden Suburb school in 1938.
More than one million minutes of archived black-and-white news clips were uploaded to the video sharing website on Wednesday to make historical news content more accessible to the public.
One clip shows crowds welcoming the Queen’s grandmother, Queen Mary, to Hampstead Garden Suburb on a royal visit to officially open Henrietta Barnett School’s junior branch in 1938. The footage documents Queen Mary, the wife of George V, greeting children dressed as Native Americans.
David Davidson, architectural advisor at Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust, said the Queen had visited the school on several occasions dating back to about 1910, and was friends with the school’s founder, philanthropist Henrietta Barnett.
He said: “Henrietta Barnett and Queen Mary were on fairly good terms and so she was able to fire off letters to the Queen inviting her along to the next thing.
“That obviously wasn’t the case here because she had died but maybe by this time, Queen Mary had developed a relationship with the institute anyway.”
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.
