Bradford actress finds 'heritage' photo in studio

Natalie Davies has appeared in Coronation Street and Casualty but her new play, Full English, is set in Bradford

A TV soap actress has unearthed a long-lost photograph of her grandparents from an "extraordinary" archive of 10,000 pictures taken decades ago.

Natalie Davies, who grew up in a mixed-race family in Bradford, was searching the city's Belle Vue Studio archives.

Ms Davies, who recently appeared in The Vicar of Dibley, is to appear in her home town in a play about her heritage.

"I feel it is a wonderful revelation. I knew the picture had been taken but now I've got access to it," she said.

"After seeing a documentary about the archive pictures I had searched but couldn't find it.

"It was like looking into my heritage and who I am when, after two hours of scanning the archives, I found their photo," added Ms Davies.

The actress said her father was "half-Bangladeshi and half-white" and her mother was "half-Pakistani and half-white".

Ms Davies said her new play Full English is to be performed in Bradford in June and would feature her grandparents' picture.

"I'm white but I am Asian as well, I'm a mix but have often been asked 'Are you full English?'

"The more stories we can get out there of the white women who brought up mixed race children the better. It's about the prejudice that was received. It was tough, really tough," she said.

"The couple were going to Bangladesh for a visit and had the picture taken to say 'look how well we've done'," said Ms Davies

The posed shot shows Ms Davies' grandparents Jahir and Irene Uddin.

Mr Uddin left Bangladesh in the 1950s for Bradford where he later met Irene, a worker in the city's textile mills.

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The Belle Vue studio must have felt "like it was the place to go if you were different, It felt you were welcome there", Ms Davies added.

John Ashton, an assistant at the photo archive, said: "Tony Walker who took the pictures was very welcoming in a way other studios might not have been.

"There are still a lot of the archive pictures marked 'unknown subject' but when we get people's names it's really useful to us.

"You don't realise the implications it has after half a century when you put out those 10,000 family pictures."

The archive is an "extraordinary record of extraordinary changes", said Tim Smith who helped save the collection

Belle Vue studios

The studios, in Manningham Lane, documented people's lives from the 1920s until it closed in 1975.

After World War Two the portraits increasingly featured migrants who came to the city from around the world.

After the studio closed many of its images were dumped in a skip although 17,000 were saved and more than 10,000 have currently been digitised.

The studio's story was told in BBC Four's documentary, Hidden History.