Congregations Leaving the Centenary Chapel, Middlesbrough (1902)

A small crowd bustles outside the now-demolished Centenary Methodist Wesleyan Chapel.

The Mitchell & Kenyon collection has numerous films of people leaving factories and churches, but here the camera is too far away from its subject to rival the best of them. Free Churches were often scornful of public entertainment, so the filmmakers' across-the-street vantage point and use of a long lens suggests that their presence may have been unsolicited or even unwelcome.