Second Thoughts: Combating juvenile delinquency in Market Harborough in 1961

A precious find in the British Film Institute's Britain on Film collection. It is pinned to Melton Mowbray on their map, which is why I have only just found it.

As the BFI's blurb for Second Thoughts says:

Two teenagers are in a cafe in Market Harborough feeding the juke box with coins as the clientele dance energetically (it's a silent film so we'll have to imagine the music). Their funds run out, so they help themselves to the collection from a nearby church.

Making their escape, they take refuge in the local Methodist youth club. Can these juvenile delinquents be saved by healthy outdoor activities and plenty of table tennis? An amateur fable with an age-old message.

The church is the town's Methodist church. This run-of-the-mill piece of Victorian gothic was demolished in the 1980s so a more modest church could be built on the same site.

It would also be interesting to know where the cafe was, and the later scenes in the film with in the film must have been shot in Harborough too.

Anyway, click on the still above to be taken to this silent gem. Think of it as Market Harborough's answer to Ray Brooks and David Hemmings in Some People. It was made by the town's Methodist youth club.