Protected status for grave of cinema’s first couple
Memorial to in-laws of world’s first film-maker among 42 of region’s historic places to get heritage listing
IN HOLLYWOOD, they run tours around the final resting places of the stars. But the grave of the world’s first screen couple, unrecognised until now, is in a quiet corner of Yorkshire where film fans seldom go.
The cinematic career of Joseph and Sarah Whitley lasted precisely two seconds, but it predated any other known footage.
It was shot in 1888 by their son-in-law, Louis Le Prince, on a film camera he had invented, and shows them walking in circles around their garden in the Leeds suburb of Roundhay.
Le Prince did not live to get rich from the medium he had invented – he famously vanished two years later after getting on a train to Paris.
But his artwork has survived on the decorated tilework that adorns Joseph and Sarah’s gravestone, and today the monument is recognised among 42 historic places in Yorkshire that have been added to the National Heritage List for England.
The memorial, personalised with bronze plaques from Joseph Whitley’s own foundry and flanked by Le Prince’s paintings of Grecian urns, stands in St John’s churchyard, just across the lake from the cafe in Roundhay Park.
The dates on the stone suggest that Sarah died just a few days after her one and only film appearance, and her husband – himself a prolific inventor who patented 50 devices – three years later.
Historic England, the Government heritage agency which has given the grave a Grade II listing, said it was “a tangible link to a pioneer of motion pictures and a crossroads moment that heralded the age of cinematography”.
The additions to its national list, all of which have been given new or enhanced protected status this year, also include
A tangible link to a pioneer of motion pictures.
Statement by Historic England on the listing of Joseph and Sarah Whitley’s gravestone.
the remains of an Elizabethan theatre, a building used as a Monty Python set and one of the first phone boxes, which stands abandoned by the edge of a weir, north of Oakworth in West Yorkshire.
The Curtain Playhouse, built in London’s Shoreditch in 1577, was where Romeo and Juliet was staged during Shakespeare’s lifetime. Its remains were discovered in recent excavations.
A more recent performance was at the Porchester Centre in Bayswater, London, where the Mr Creosote sketch in Monty
Python’s The Meaning of Life was filmed in 1982. Its listed status has been upgraded to Grade II*.
Both are on a grander scale than the abandoned, 1922 concrete phone box at Newsholme Dean. One of only seven surviving examples of Britain’s first kiosk design – another is in Hull – it was later
repurposed by the water board to house measuring equipment.
The new Yorkshire list also affords protection to the street corner Templar pub behind the new John Lewis in the centre of Leeds, and to a pigeon cote in the grounds of Bridlington’s Sewerby Hall, which was built in the early 19th century by the Greame
family. With 296 nest boxes on two storeys built into the walls, the tower-like structure was an ostentatious display of wealth and power at a time when pigeon flocks were seen as status symbols rather than nuisances.
Duncan Wilson, chief executive of Historic England, said: “A fascinating range of
historic buildings and sites are added to the list each year and 2019 is no exception.
“By celebrating the extraordinary historic places which surround us, above and below ground, we hope to inspire in people a greater interest in our shared heritage, and a commitment to pass it on.”