Historic video footage offering viewers a glimpse into life in Hampstead and the Suburb in the 1930s, ’50s and ’60s has been released on 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.

Among the newsreels were a handful of fascinating clips capturing the lives of ordinary people in Camden – and revealing how little has changed.

One of the videos shows skiers and tobogganists enjoying a year of particularly heavy snowfall on Hampstead Heath in 1955.

A newsreader tells viewers: “A few enterprising folk take their skis to Hampstead Heath, a popular rendezvous come snow or sunshine. It must have been difficult avoiding the hazards.”

Tony Ghilchick, of the Heath and Hampstead Society, has fond memories of doing the same when he was a child.

He said: “I remember going there as a youngster and then taking my children years later. There aren’t many places where it is steep enough to ski down but we used to get more snow in those days.”

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.