STROKESTOWN ON FILM

Great old footage (with music added) of Strokestown and surrounds here as seen from "Roscommon Revealed". The footage was taken in the late 40s and early 50s by the very talented Billy Chapman. Chapman (1902-1959) was a musician, decorative plasterer and cinema-owner who lived in Strokestown, Co. Roscommon. A Derry native, Chapman worked as a riveter in the shipyards of Belfast before emigrating in 1929 to the US, where he worked as a decorative plasterer. He returned to Ireland after seven years and settled in Strokestown, his mother’s hometown. In 1940, he built the Club Cinema - no small feat, given the shortage of building materials occasioned by the outbreak of the Second World War. A gifted musician, Chapman added filmmaking to his list of accomplishments when, in 1948, he began filming local events for exhibition in his cinema. Chapman’s short films were often helpful in attracting punters to the less promising features. His practice of showing his own films before the feature was not without precedent - the Horgan Brothers in Youghal and Canon Doherty in Donegal exhibited their films of local people and events before the main attraction. After he married in 1952, Billy Chapman put away his camera. The last three reels in the collection were shot by others.