About

Quayside Newcastle upon Tyne Tyne&Wear England UK

Contact me at: localhistoryvideos@gmail.com

Hi, I’m Debbie

Local History Videos is a site dedicated to the old photos, historic pictures, and archive film of the places you know and love.

There’s a vast number of historic videos on YouTube showing us the places we know and love in the past.

Some of these little gems have just a handful of views.

This is often because they don’t appear in many video search results or recommendations. 

Why? Young people like and subscribe to everything they like, so their content gets shared and recommended by the computer alogorithms much more widely. Older people are much more circumspect, and more likely to tell real friends than a computer that they liked something. The algorithms note the lack of ‘engagement’, and the video is left to sink to the bottom of search results.

Then there’s the issue that video titles and information gaps lead to lots of confusion. 

For example, over the past five hundred years, every time a group of people left British shores to set up home in a new country, they’ve named places and areas after the homes they left. So the same names appear in different parts of the world.

Videos often only name the town or city, and everyone is left to guess where it is, which means fewer people bother clicking through to watch.

Local History Videos

I learnt how to set up a WordPress site, which is no easy feat, by watching and copying YouTube videos.

Then as time allows with work and family life, I’ve been creating pages to discover and promote videos from archives, vintage film collectors, and people uploading home movies to YouTube.

It’s all been a process of experimentation, so you’ll find some pages better set out than others.

At the heart of this site is a genuine desire to get more people to discover their local history through old films. 

If anyone spots any errors on a page, can suggest useful resources to link to or thinks their own video should be included, please do get in touch. 

Thanks for visiting this site, and I do hope you find your favourite piece of old film to brighten your day,

Debbie