Farmer John

O, sighs the office-bound man, how wonderful to be a farmer! And, with breeches and boots, he tries the good life as ‘Farmer John’.

Breeches and wellies do not a farmer make, as an urban draughtsman yearning for the good life discovers, eventually. This is the second in a short series of comic dramas shot by John W Meredith and enacted by fellow workers from the Thompson Brothers’ Bradley Engineering Works in Bilston, Staffordshire, when on their annual camping trip to Penygeulan farm, Llanymawddwy. Richard Ellis Jones, of Penygeulan, and his family also take part in this town-meets-country drama.

Jack Whale, as here, plays the main character in all the Meredith films held by the Archive: ‘Early Film-making at Welsh Camp’ (1929), ‘Jack Reforms’ (1931) and ‘We Regret’ (1932). In 1935, Meredith filmed a drama directed by the local Reverend H E Hughes which, as entitled, retold the legend of ‘Gwylliaid Cochion Mawddwy/The Bandits of Mawddwy’ and involved the whole community.