First western was shot in Blackburn, claims researcher

The majestic landscape of Monument Valley. The rugged mountain scenery of the Sierra Nevada. The railroads, the ranches, the bars and the brothels of a thousand frontier towns. Westerns have been filmed in all manner of locations but the world’s first western, it has been claimed, was shot on the outskirts of Blackburn.

Until this week it was commonly held that the genre’s first film was The Great Train Robbery, which was filmed in the US in 1903. Research, however, has suggested that a pair of film-makers from Blackburn made the first western in 1899.

Shot in fields near the Lancashire town, Kidnapping by Indians shows native Americans — local actors with headdresses and tomahawks — attempting to take a baby girl from