Blackburn’s integral role in creating the first ever Western film

Blackburn’s role in creating the ‘Western’ film genre is to be celebrated with an eye-catching new piece of public art in its historic Northgate Conservation Area.

The installation will mark the fact that the first-ever such movie was made by pioneering movie makers Mitchell and Kenyon in the town. The artwork of 40 pewter arrows located as it shot into the wall will be on the gable end of the terraced block in Northgate in the town centre where the cinema pioneers worked in the late 1890s and early 1900s.

It will celebrate the fact that the world’s first-ever Western film – ‘Kidnapping by Indians’ – was created on the premises. In 1994 an extraordinary archive of Edwardian films was discovered in the basement of a shop in Northgate.

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While studying them in 2019, critically-acclaimed artist and writer, Jamie Holman discovered the short clip of ‘Kidnapping by Indians’ and the date on the film indicated that it was the world’s first Western. Now Uncultured Creatives has submitted a planning application for the artwork on the wall of 34 Northgate.

Mr Holman, who chairs The National Festival of Making, said: “We have a rich and diverse cultural heritage in Blackburn with Darwen which includes the founding of the football league, mill poetry, painting and music. We knew that Mitchell and Kenyon were important filmmakers, but we are proud to commemorate that the world’s first Western was made here in the town centre. It’s an extraordinary story that I am proud to tell on their behalf.”

The firm, one of the largest British film companies in the 1900s, had two premises in the Blackburn town centre – 21 King Street and 40 Northgate. The block has recently undergone a shop front transformation as part of the Blakey Moor Townscape Heritage Project.