Home Guard Parade (Cardiff) and Manoeuvres

Cardiff City Hall’s Clock Tower offers the film-maker a bird’s eye view of the Home Guard/Royal Welch Fusiliers parade below. Home Guard manoeuvres are shot on the ground.

A Home Guard and Royal Welch Fusiliers parade outside Cardiff City Hall (possibly showing the Home Guard Stand Down in December 1944?) followed by footage of the Home Guard on manoeuvres – making a floating bridge, firing guns, retrieving a ‘casualty’ by boat. Filmed by Lionel Dingle, a Cornishman who had made Cardiff his home and who was active in the Home Guard.

Mr Dingle, a mining engineer, was employed in Cardiff by the Cornish drilling company Holman Brothers and was accustomed, as part of his work, to taking aerial shots of Cardiff which probably explains his access to the City Hall’s clock tower, from which position he has filmed the parade seen here. As well as being an active member of the Home Guard he was an accomplished, competitive rifle shooter. He married a woman from Cardiff and the city became his home.