On the Banks of Allan Water

By Grant Shaw

Beverley Kilby recently gave me some scraps of a 1917 edition of the Ilkeston Pioneer newspaper, and these include the weekly adverts for ‘what’s on’ at the Kings and Scala Cinemas.

I was immediately sucked into the rabbit hole of the Internet looking up these old films and their stars and found that the ‘huge attraction’ ‘On the Banks of Allan Water’ is a silent British melodrama directed by Wilfred Noy made by Clarendon Films in 1916 featuring (as the advert says) Basil Gill and Violet Leicester.

It is the story of a baronet’s son who falls in love on holiday in Scotland and marries a miller’s daughter who is so upset by their class difference she almost commits suicide, but all is right in the end. The film has been saved and restored by the British Film Institute and is viewable on You Tube if you must. It is very much of its time but well-acted for this kind of thing.

Basil Gill (1877-1955) at 39 might have been a bit old for the part but he plays it manfully. Gill was a well-known Shakespearean stage actor and appeared in several film adaptations. In 1938 he appeared in the film of ‘The Citadel’ with Robert Donat and seems to have had a very active but fairly minor film career. Sadly I could find little about Violet Leicester. Indeed, opinion is divided as to whether she was another actress using an alternative name.