Click on the video thumbnail to open the link. Most open in YouTube, some on other channels, for copyright reasons.
Videos are listed by date of the material that they cover, or publication date. Oldest first.
Explore and perhaps follow our own Express Dairy Tales YouTube channel where there are around 50 unique videos about Express Dairy over the years.
Highlights and AI-enhanced extracts from 'The Cow's Tail' video, showing the Job's Dairy Hanworth plant in very early days, with batch pasteurisation, wide-necked bottles and hand-filled crates. The dairy operated for over 100 years from 1920 and only closed in 2024.
Harpenden Dairies Ltd was located at 15 Station Road, Harpenden, Hertfordshire and the Harpenden's Wonderful Milk Supply (1930) film shows a herd of ‘Lincoln Red’ cattle grazing and semi-mechanised bottle filling and sterilising, with delivery using hand carts. Egg grading, and the Company’s local shop are also featured. (2 minutes, silent)
This short film was produced by United Dairies in 1931, and shows the complete process from cow to consumer. Starting with cows grazing in fields alongside a river, followed by hand-milking in a cowshed. Milk is then shown being transported to London by rail, stored in tanks and bottled. In the laboratory, butterfat testing is being carried out, and a visitor is being shown round and asking questions. Horse-drawn floats then take milk to the customers, and the milkman is shown delivering to the doorstep.
This 12 minute Somersetshire Dairy Farming film from 1937 shows hand milking in the field and machine milking into buckets. 17 gallon conical churns are in use. There's an interesting and detailed sequence about cheesemaking at the Rooksbridge cheese factory, which did not close until 1993, after 123 years.
'A Bottle of Milk' (1946) is a silent film made by A.C. Barnden, headmaster of a local school at Burgess Hill, Sussex. Shows cows grazing and afternoon machine milking into pails. Glass bottles are washed, filled and capped by hand and then loaded onto a van for delivery. (5 minutes)
AI Enhanced and edited version of 'A Better Milk Story', about the Roberts family and history of Job's Dairy from the end of the 19th Century to the 1960s.
Bottling plant at A1 Dairies - Whetstone (Early 1960's) contains evocative images of milk bottling at A1 Dairies, who were purchased by Express in July 1967. Video uploaded by John de Rivaz, his family ran the Company, whose chairman at the time was Gerald de Rivaz.
Job's Dairy, Didcot in 1961, a tour of the dairy surroundings, buildings and plant. Russell Aldridge comments "Cine film taken by my Nan. My grandfather Arthur Pearcey was Manager of the Dairy at Didcot in the 60's until 1972."
This silent video was produced by Wootton Bassett Town Hall Museum, to mark the closing of the dairy in 2003, after 95 years of operation. I included this speeded up and slightly edited version in our collection as the dairy was built by the Dairy Supply Company, and of course many of the operations described are common to the Express creameries that started at the beginning of the 20th Century. All credit to Roger Smith for the production.