WHEN smoking was banned in Britain’s first “fresh air pub” the regulars didn’t take it well. It was 1971 and smokers were used to lighting up where they liked - but this Dales landlord stuck to his guns.

The Yorkshire pub was highlighted by current affairs TV programme Nationwide in one of several quirky films released from BBC archives. The broadcaster has opened up its collection of unusual news footage, much of it shot locally over several decades. Other newly released films include how the Brontes spent their childhood in Haworth’s Parsonage, the Flying Scotsman in action, and the campaign to stop Wensleydale cheese being made in Lancashire.

In The Brontes Lived Here, first broadcast on July 12, 1973, novelist Margaret Drabble explores the literary family’s Haworth home and the room where as “restless children” they spent most of their time. Examining one of the miniature books they created as children, Drabble reflects on “the four of them cooped up here in the lamplight”. She adds:”The picture of them pacing around the dining table in the evenings while they created their imaginary worlds is to me like an image of souls trying to break out of their confines”. The film also shows Patrick Bronte’s study, with his ink well, books and top hat on his desk.

On December 7, 1971 Bob Langley from Nationwide visited the first pub in Britain to ban smoking. “You’re not allowed to smoke here and you’re not allowed to forget that either,” said Langley, as the camera panned to sternly-worded signs all over the Appletreewick pub. There was even mouthwash which, said the reporter, was designed to make cigarettes taste so unpleasant “even the most dedicated smoker will throw his cig away”.

Takings were down by 70per cent since landlord John Showers introduced the ban...but he revealed he had a tragic reason for imposing it.

Another report from the Dales was broadcast on May 22, 1992. BBC News told viewers that a creamery in Hawes where Wensleydale cheese had been made for 900 years, was in danger of relocating to Lancashire. The report said the Wensleydale limestone, beneath the grass the cows fed on, was the secret to the cheese, and 14,000 gallons of milk produced up to 50 tons of it a week. The relocation threat “aroused community passions” and a shopkeeper whose family had sold the cheese for 130 years said moving it to Lancashire would “lose the Wensleydale mystique”.

In a Blue Peter ‘Special Assignment’ on April 28, 1974, Valerie Singleton went to York where The Flying Scotsman, was leaving for Scarborough. Crowds gathered on the platform as bagpipes played. Said Valerie: “Like a ghost from another age, the Scotsman steamed proudly out of the station”

Other films from the BBC archive show Bradford life over the past 60 years. As highlighted by the T&A, a 1975 Nationwide report revealed a “miracle hot air bed” operated by a stream of warm air pumped through a pipe into the mattress, and Tomorrow’s World in 1987 showed how a Pudsey chippy was using “the first ever computer-controlled fish-fryer”. A 1962 report from Bradford’s Town Hall revealed that the bells were playing “modern tunes” including the theme from TV’s Z Cars.

* Archive footage is released by the BBC weekly, with a selection shown on the T&A website.