Amazing cine film footage shows Houghton-le-Spring's main shopping street in the 1930s

What an insight it is into life in Newbottle Street in the 1930s.

There’s a shopping cart in the road, lots of children watching the camera, sales are under way and there are queues outside the Empire Cinema.

This rare cine clip has been shared with the Sunderland Echo by the North East Film Archive.

Davidsons and Doggarts for all your bargains

The NEFA footage includes M. T. Davidson’s shop, Doggarts among many others.

Our thanks go to NEFA for the film and you can find a longer version on the NEFA website.

NEFA has a huge catalogue of over 70,000 items of original film, video tape, and born-digital material.

Its team has painstakingly taken on the task of preserving, cataloguing, and digitising these vital collections of reminders of our past.

Seaburn fairground in 1966

NEFA officials have previously shared footage of fun at the Seaburn fairground in 1966 and Brian Clough in one of his last matches for Sunderland before the injury which put paid to his playing career.

The archive operates over two regional sites: They are the Yorkshire Film Archive, based in York, and the North East Film Archive, based in Middlesbrough.

Interested people can find out more about its work and collections by visiting the archive’s website online at www.yfanefa.com

If you have cine film of Sunderland and County Durham in the past, we would love to hear from you, whatever the subject may be.

Get in touch by emailing [email protected]