HOLMFIRTH Film Festival will be having a ‘local night’ on May 21 that will feature a movie from a director of Hollywood blockbusters and another that touches on the mystery of Huddersfield’s most famous health drink.
The director is Yorkshire-born Ken Annakin who started out making documentaries for the British Film Council before going to America to direct films such as Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines and Battle of the Bulge.
His local offering is the evocative We Of The West Riding about a textile family in 1947 and filmed in Huddersfield and Halifax.
Also screened will be The Brook about Brook Motors.
And the health drink?
That can be none other than Dr Dan’s.
It features in a film from the Huddersfield Video and Cine Club about the closure of the old Huddersfield Market Hall in 1970.
Dr Dan’s Drink of Health was served from large casks at his stall. It is said chaps with hangovers would try a glass and mothers would take their children for a small draught of the elixir.
Its properties were never fully explained, its recipe remained secret and it became part of Huddersfield folk lore.
Festival chairman Stephen Dorril said: “Dan Holroyd, or Professor Holroyd, first brought it over to Huddersfield from Bradford in a barrel in 1877. The chap who eventually bought Dan’s Bar also paid for the recipe. This was kept in a solicitor’s safe until the cash was actually handed over.”
Dr Dan’s continued to be sold in the new Market Hall until 1980 before time was finally called.
Stephen said: “But whatever happened to the recipe?”
