It was late afternoon when we began to arrive at the village engaged, so it would seem, in on-going festivities. By happy coincidence our event tied in with the tail end of Shotesham Open Gardens weekend, something we had not known when booking the venue. The pub was packed – we had difficulty weaving through those in the bar as we made our presence known – and the garden was equally full. There was certainly a festive atmosphere in the air and the quintessentially British situation of people of all ages enjoying drinks and the sunshine at the local pub.
A fully outside event for us this time. The band worked its way through a selection of tunes, of various types, as usual. Our repertoire of tunes taken from myriad recordings of local traditional musicians is being further augmented by those from two manuscript tune books from the county: George Watson of Swanton Abbott and William Clarke of Feltwell. We certainly will never run out of suitable material. In addition, Tom Knight produced a seemingly endless amount of tunes on the dulcimer, as they occurred to him, most stemming from the repertoire of his grandfather, Reg Reader. Endearingly, young two-year old Reggie helped his dad out on a couple of occasions – perhaps the first steps in his following in the footsteps of his great grandfather, as well as father? Several people sat in with us throughout the proceedings, creating a full sound, which seemed to be greatly appreciated by those in the garden.
The gravel underfoot was potentially a problem for dancers, although not so bad for the step dancers, as it happened, once boards had been put down, and much took place. Game as ever, Barry Mobbs and Monica Rackham managed to waltz and polka on several occasions, retaining the grace despite the hazards underfoot. The dancing was a draw, as far as interest was concerned, and several local youngsters were inspired to try their hand (or feet?) at it. Given the acoustic situation, we decided to forgo songs for the occasion and to concentrate on a few hours of instrumental music. It has to be said that it fitted the occasion and surroundings perfectly.
So a very enjoyable afternoon and a successful foray into south Norfolk. We have been asked back to the pub, if we wish, and maybe at some time in the future we’ll do another event there, perhaps inside where we can give the songs an airing too.
Essex is a county with a rich history of traditional song. It was, after all, the first place that Vaughan Williams noted down a song, Bushes and Briars from Charles Potiphar in December 1903, the first of 115 taken down by the composer in the county, mainly between December 1903 and October 1904. (1) It is surprising then, and somewhat saddening, that so little audio material has been made available of traditional song collected in the county, particularly given the riches available from Suffolk and Norfolk, to the north. Aside from the material under review, the only songs released seem to be four songs each by Kitty Harvey and Cliff Yeldham, recorded by Peter Kennedy in Thaxted in 1958 (2) and Sam Steele’s tracks of Reg Bacon of Radwinter, as well as, more extensively, Neil Lanham’s recordings of the same singer and others in the 1960s.(3)
In 1998 the Veteran label released a cassette album of Harry Green (1874-1968) entitled Harry Green – Old Songs and Folk Songs from Essex (VT135). It contained seventeen tracks recorded by Fred Hamer in 1967 who, despite being blind, collected much material from different areas of the country in the 1960s. (4) Rod Stradling reviewed the release for Musical Traditions in March 1998, in which he wrote: “I am aware of very little Essex song or music on record, so this must be considered an important historical document. Furthermore, that a man of 93 years of age – after a life of hard physical toil in the open air – should be able to sing like this, is quite extraordinary…Not only is he a splendid performer, but there is some interesting material here as well. Harry Green is a man for unlikely couplings of tunes and texts…He is also a dab hand at dealing with odd-length lines…” (5)
In 2010, Veteran reissued the material on CD, now as The Fox and the Hare – Harry Green and Other Traditional Singers from Essex (VT135CD), adding more tracks from other sources, as John Howson explained in the booklet notes: “There are, in all, just forty minutes of recordings of Harry, so on this CD we have been able to include four other fine Essex traditional singers: Ernest Austin (Great Bentley), ‘Sugar’ Bailey (Shellow Bowells), Stan Walters (Stanstead Mountfitchet) and Lorna Tarran (West Mersea).” (6) What we have here, then, is the complete recorded output of Harry Green, as well as a smattering of songs, of varying styles, from others across the county.
Despite his advanced age, Harry Green was a marvellous singer. John Howson comments that “Harry Green was obviously a real old character, and you can almost see the sparkle in his eye when he recites The Pear Tree or the epilogue to Down in the Fields and Ladies Won’t You Marry.” (7) The seventeen tracks are presented here in three batches of five or six, interspersed with the other singers. The CD kicks off with a magnificent version of The Merchant’s Daughter and the Highwayman, of which Rod Stradling wrote: “here we find an unusually full text paired with a version of the Fagan the Cobbler tune. What is particularly intriguing is that the usual tune
turns up later on…carrying the verses of She was a Stranger in London. Both examples work very well in their new situations. He is also a dab hand at dealing with odd-length lines, and this example from The Merchant’s Daughter is particularly enjoyable.” (8) This tour-de-force is followed by the memory-testing recitation The Pear Tree, which gives a very good contrast of material. Space precludes a track-by-track appraisal, but suffice to say that thereafter Harry Green delivers a wide selection of material in a clear and assured way, without the breathlessness one might expect with a man of his age. Rural favourites such as When Jones’ Ale was New and Down in the Fields Where the Buttercups All Grow rub shoulders with staunchly old, traditional fare such as As I Walked Out One May Morning and Banks of the Sweet Primroses, the latter sadly only a fragment. There is the equally fragmentary Thaxted Bells and The Blackguard Gypsies, the rare (in Britain) The Fox and the Hare, in full, and such popular and stage favourites from the late nineteenth century as Two Sweethearts and Treat My Daughter Kindly. It’s also great to hear the words to the local favourite polka tune Oh Joe the Boat is Going Over and a sprightly Ladies Won’t You Marry to the tune of In and Out the Windows. Occasional spoken asides and epilogues show an infectious enthusiasm, evident throughout the forty minutes of Harry Green’s singing.
Another twenty minutes or so is taken up with the other four singers, with two tracks from each. Ernest Austin gives us John Barleycorn and Hares on the Mountain / Knife in the Window. He has a somewhat light delivery – he sounds rather subdued after Harry Green, but I don’t mean that as a criticism – but an assured style nonetheless. These two tracks were included on the Topic LP Flash Company in 1974, an album which I reviewed in the previous newsletter. (9) Herbert ‘Sugar’ Bailey, from Shellow Bowells, near Chelmsford, had a cassette album of his songs released in 1989: Who’s Going to Hold My Horse? The two tracks here are taken from that release. The comic and pacy music-hall song The Photo of the Girl I Left Behind is contrasted with the well-known traditional Bunch of Thyme, given in an unhurried, deliberate manner, letting the – admittedly slender – story unfold.
Stan Walters gives us a version of Died for Love, called here A Girl Who Led a Life so Straight. John Howson, in the notes, comments that “In England the song was sung by many Gypsy singers” and to my ears Stan Walters sounds rather similar in style, with his rather slow, stately delivery. By contrast we have When Irish Eggs are Frying, a parody of When Irish Eyes are Smiling, of course, here just a fragment really. The only female singer, Lorna Tarran, gives us The Herring Song, with its cumulative cast, a popular song in East Anglia, collected several times prior in Essex. Finally we have the unusual The Flash Girl, a combination of recitation and song fragments, of which John Howson comments: “Lorna Tarran learned this intriguing piece from her grandmother and there is a hand-written transcript of it in the Mersea Island Museum collection, at the top of which it states ‘by Grannie French 1885 to 1938’. The piece is a combination of texts from several sources, with the story set on Mersea Island. The opening four lines are very similar to those which start Never Been to Colchester, which is included in Charles Benham’s Essex Ballads (1897), while the chorus and song verses are based on the song The Knickerbocker Line, which usually tells the story of a lady of the night stealing a watch.” (10) Intriguing indeed!
The Fox and the Hare is, to the best of my knowledge, the only full length album of Essex traditional music and song (leaving aside its previous cassette incarnation) in existence. That is of course a great shame, in an area which has generally been very well represented indeed over the decades by recordings of such material – although it has to be said that the same situation applies to Cambridgeshire. I am here referring to the concept of ‘traditional’ in a narrow sense – that of performers or ‘bearers’ who learned and performed within their communities, as opposed to the ‘revival’ of enthusiasts who have come to the music by choice and interest, from outside a community-based music situation (which hardly exists anymore, anyway, at least in England). It is fortuitous that there are the printed texts available from which singers and enthusiasts can learn so much, and that recordings have been produced of such material over the years, by bands such as Potiphar’s Apprentices. (11) It is, however, a shame that there is such a paucity of sound recordings of ‘source’ singers, to continue to act as inspiration, as well as to enjoy in their own right.
Judging by these seventeen tracks given here, Harry Green stands up there with the best of the East Anglian singers, those lauded for style, repertoire and authenticity. It is easy to fall into musing on the ‘what ifs’ – what if he had been recorded when much younger? What if he had been recorded more extensively? What if other members of his community had been available to sing, or even to comment? But ultimately this is pointless. We have what we have, and we should of course be grateful for that. He was a fine singer and this CD stands as a great testament to that. Harry was a pub singer. He didn’t sing much at home. His daughter Chrissie Andrews told John Howson in 1987: “Well he used to sing in the pubs. He used to have a sing-song with his old friends in the pubs…There used to be accordion players and somebody would get up and stepdance…When we went on coach outings and that sort of thing, he’d sing. Nobody else in our family used to sing. Father was the only one, but I can’t remember him singing in the house, not for any length of time. He might just sing the verse of a song or something like that. Not like he did when Fred Hamer came along and he’d sing a whole song.” (12)
Thankfully Fred Hamer did record him singing – whole songs. This CD is essential for the collection of anyone interested in East Anglian traditional song. The obvious reason is that it’s the only one from Essex, but there’s much more to it than that – particularly the quality of Harry Green’s singing and his unusual repertoire. The other singers who augment the original release all acquit themselves very well – a brief aural snapshot of each one – and demonstrate that more material could have been released from this county. The sound quality of the disc is generally very clear – only the Lorna Tarran tracks have a bit of noise, but this doesn’t impair enjoyment. As is usual with Veteran releases, the CD package is well presented, with performer biographies, photographs and extensive track notes. At the time of writing the recording is available from Veteran as both CD and download, so there isn’t really any excuse, if you haven’t got it already.
Chris Holderness July 2026
Notes:
1. See ‘The Essex Researchers’ for information about what has been printed, with reference to the work of Sue Cubbin, David Occomore and Phil Heath-Coleman, at eatmt.org.uk/the-essex-researchers as part of the information on the site about Vaughan Williams collecting in East Anglia
2. Released as The Foggy Dew: Suffolk and Essex Singers (Folktrax FTX 040) as a cassette and later CDR. It has long been unavailable. The Essex material comprised Kitty Harvey singing Sylvia, Mary Across the Wild Moor, The Young British Waterman and The Squire of Tamworth and Cliff Yeldham singing The Cobbler and the Butcher, Down in Cimred’s Garden, The Nobleman’s Lady, The Sailor Boy and The Tree in the Wood
3. Veteran VT150CD Heel and Toe: Reg Bacon sings Banks of the Sweet Dundee, John Barleycorn, Nothing to Do With Me and The Barley Mow – this CD was reviewed in a previous newsletter; NLCD 5 / 6 Stour Valley: Reg Bacon sings The Banks of Sweet Dundee, She Promised to Meet Me at the Gate at Eight, The Dark-Eyed Sailor, The Spotted Cow, The Barley Mow and John Barleycorn. The CD set also includes Ernest Austin: The Nutting Girl and Hares on a Mountain, Tom Bush: His Day’s Work Was Done, John Carter: Harvest Home Largess Song, George Cowle: We’ll Call for the Grog and My Boy Billy, Bob Manning: Treat My Daughter Kindly, Riding on a Free Train and McCafferty, Beryl Cowan: The Barley Mow, Essex Hawkey Encore, The Fox and the Hare, The Herrings’ Heads, The Oyster Girl, Treat My Daughter Kindly and I Wonder When I Shall Be Married? David Francis: The Dunmow Flitch of Bacon and With My Navvy Boots On, Buster Brown: Why is Bacon So Tough?, My Meatless Day and The Photo of the Girl I Left Behind Me, Leonard Woodley: Old Ingatestone Hall and Charlie Cutmore: Joby Cutmore’s Hornpipe – as well as some performers from outside the county. This is probably the largest collection of Essex material outside the album under review
4. Some of Fred Hamer’s field recordings have also been released on Garners Gay (EFDSS LP 1006) and The Leaves of Life (VWML 003 – cassette)
5. Review of the cassette by Rod Stradling: Musical Traditions, 08/03/98 mustrad.mainlynorfolk.info
6. Introduction section of CD booklet notes
7. Harry Green biography section of booklet notes
8. The Musical Traditions review, as 05, above
9. Topic 12TS243 Flash Company – reviewed in July’s newsletter
10. ‘The Flash Girl’ notes in CD booklet. The Knickerbocker Line was a New York streetcar route from the mid-nineteenth century until the early twentieth, before being replaced by the subway. The song had reached England by the early twentieth century and was noted by collectors several times. Sam Larner’s The Dogger Bank uses the same tune and mentions the line in the final chorus.
11. See note 01, above, for more information
12. Quoted inthereview-note05, above-fromthecassette inlaynotes, not included in thoseoftheCD
Here for perusal are a couple of LPs of the singing tradition in Suffolk, both released in the 1970s, the Ling Family disc in 1977 and Flash Company in 1974. Both feature largely well-known singers who had significant contact with the wider world of enthusiasts once they had been ‘discovered’ and acted as source performers in that milieu – the ‘real thing’! (1)
Irish folk song expert John Moulden reviewed the first of these, scathingly, in 1978 (2). In a discussion of the Ling Family disc and also Johnny Doughty’s Round Rye Bay for More album (3) – about which he was equally unenthusiastic – he commented, “In the context of an impoverished tradition, singers like the ones on disc 2 have their place as song carriers. But being an Irishman and living in an area where good singing is to be found quite easily, I doubt whether I will be able to force myself to listen to this record again. Is it really a service to folk music to publish such style-less and boring stuff?”
Stiff dismissal indeed. To be fair, Mr Moulden later contended that “since the value of a singer and his performance does not count in tradition but only the singing, I have to confess that my strictures had no point whatsoever”, whilst still maintaining that he hadn’t changed his mind about the LPs. (4) Fair enough, if that was his opinion, but “an impoverished tradition”? Surely that area of Suffolk had anything but an impoverished singing tradition, given the status of venues like Blaxhall Ship, Snape Crown and Eastbridge Eel’s Foot, as well as the recordings of Peter Kennedy, Neil Lanham and others in the heady days of the 1950s and early 1960s. (5) Granted, the tradition was in something of a decline, perhaps, as it was not being taken up by a younger generation, but the material collected by Ginette Dunn and Keith Summers in that decade would suggest that it was still in a healthy state at that point at least, whatever the future may bring. (6)
It is from Keith Summers’ recordings that the first LP, The Ling Family, is taken, one of several discs of his field recordings released by Topic around that time. (7) What we have is a selection of songs from two brothers, George (b 1904) and Geoff (b 1916), and their cousin Percy (b 1906), from the large Ling family of singers (8) from Blaxhall, Suffolk. The Ship in the village needs no introduction as the premier singing pub of the area and the Lings were foremost as singers there for countless years, passing on the songs down through the generations, where “transmission of songs from them (the older ones – a group of brothers) to younger members of the family was common,” as Ginette Dunn comments in the sleeve notes.
George Ling gives us six songs, all at a fair pace. It is interesting that he moved to Croydon as a young man, in 1926, and lived there for the rest of his life, having already absorbed a fair repertoire before leaving the area. He sings in an assured, brisk way, giving us here a good selection of solid traditional fare: On Board the Leicester Castle, The Lakes of Coolfin, The Deserter and Jolly Jack the Sailor, as well as the Napoleonic epic The Bonny Bunch of Roses and that sturdy East Anglian favourite Nancy of Yarmouth. His younger brother Geoff, who stayed in the area, has a slower, declamatory style. Of the five songs here, once again there is solid traditional fare, with Green Bushes (actually regarded by the family as George’s song) (9), Died for Love, Little Ball of Yarn and On the Banks of the Clyde, as well as A Group of Young Squaddies, which perhaps seems cloyingly sentimental to modern ears (whereas the more traditional material does seem somewhat timeless by comparison), but which is quite representative of that type of song which occurred frequently in rural singers’ repertoires.
Percy Ling, from whom we have five songs, gives us the equally sentimental Little Sweetheart. His pace is very similar to Geoff’s: unhurried and deliberate. There is a vein of comedy in his material, with the bawdy The Lobster and The Man All Tattered and Torn. Also present are two perennial Suffolk favourites: Fagin the Cobbler and Underneath Her Apron; the former, in which the protagonist sometimes bears a different name, deals with the situation of an alcoholic wife, who is eventually reformed, and the second the predicament of an unexpectedly-pregnant young girl, rather light-hearted treatment of both of these circumstances, it has to be said, but popular nonetheless. (10) Of his performing, Percy comments in the sleeve notes, that, “I first started singing in pubs when I was 18 – you had to be the right age that time of day. I had some good nights in Tunstall Green Man, Snape Plough, The Eel’s Foot, Butley Oyster and Blaxhall Ship. I picked up songs from all over.”
And so it seems: Geoff and Percy as regular singers in the pubs of the area, and George too when back on visits. A selection of songs from three men whose repertoire was grounded in the family and area. The previously mentioned John Moulden commented, in another review – that of Irish singer Mary Ann Carolan’s Topic record (11) – “Is it necessary to say that records of traditional singing are always a disappointment?…Even the best recording is a poor substitute for the raw bar. Further they compress experience in a well nigh intolerable way, putting a night of songs, or a fortnight’s, into three quarters of an hour and without any of the ambience.” He does have a point, it has to be conceded. There is no substitute for experiencing a performance live, in its actuality, but what if that is no longer possible? Surely even as a document of something no longer extant it is worth preserving. I would venture to say that it does. As to “style-less and boring stuff”, I would certainly have to disagree. I will admit that the first time I heard the LP I wasn’t overly impressed; it was all somehow too austere. Time, much further listening and a much greater appreciation of what the singing tradition entails, has led me to revise that view considerably. Although all three men have their own distinct style, there is also something very typical of east Suffolk performances with all of them. All three are vibrant bearers of this tradition.
Which brings us on to the second disc which, on the face of it, seems rather similar to the first: both have the rather austere-looking sleeves which Topic favoured at the time (and which I have to say I do rather like) and both feature three local male singers. Two of them, Bob Hart and Percy Webb, are from the same area of Suffolk as the Lings, above, and the third, Ernest Austin, from Great Bentley in Essex. The album was released in 1974 and comprised recordings of Bob Hart and Ernest Austin by Tony Engle in 1973, together with live recordings of Percy Webb at The King’s Head, Islington, in 1968 (it doesn’t say by whom). In the sleeve notes Mike Yates talks of Vaughan Williams collecting songs in Essex and then goes on to state, “Although collectors were active in other parts of England, time has shown that it is only in East Anglia that such traditions now remain to anything like a similar extent,” with the inference that these three men were fine examples of this then-continuing tradition, which indeed they were.
The LP kicks off appropriately with that perennial local favourite, The Bold Princess Royal, sung by Bob Hart – who at this point had already had a full LP of his singing issued. (12) He has a rather gentle, soft style compared with many of his singing companions. There are countless performances of this song, and certainly Bob Hart’s is as good as any. Much the same can be said for the breezy Seventeen Come Sunday, which follows it. Good, solid traditional fare, with life breathed into them by his assured delivery. The remainder of the LP side is given over to Percy Webb, with four live tracks. Here we have crowd-pleasing favourites, well-paced and with the opportunity for the audience to join in at times, which they can be heard doing on occasion. The Faithful Sailor Boy, Flash Company, Wheel Your P’rambulator and Go and Leave Me: all lively and well-suited to Percy Webb’s declamatory style. He was regarded as being the life and soul of any singing session, and here he doesn’t disappoint. With reference to the previous contention about the sterility of non-live circumstances, whether or not the fact that these are live performances gives them more immediacy is a moot point: I would venture that it’s not really the case here.
Side two includes four more tracks by Bob Hart. If his other two performances were of staunchly traditional material, here there is more variety. There are traditional songs in the form of the sly Rap-a-Tap-Tap, which must have been the delight of farm workers, with its tale of one of their number having greater sexual prowess than their employer, much to the satisfaction of that employer’s wife, and the very common Barbara Allen. The first was common enough in East Anglia, the latter all over the English-speaking world. Once again, Bob Hart gives us enjoyable versions in which the stories unfold effortlessly. We also get more recent material in the form of The Gypsy’s Warning, a song of American origin from the 1860s, and The Song of the Thrush, a music hall number set in Australia. The remainder of the side is given over to two tracks by Ernest Austin: the old warhorse John Barleycorn (13) and a composite of Hares on the Mountain / The Knife in the Window, which I suppose deal together with different aspects of relationships between women and men! Although with a very different delivery, Ernest Austin also has a somewhat ‘quiet’ style, in a similar vein to Bob Hart. (14) In all, a dozen tracks of a fair selection of songs, mostly fairly typical of the kind of material that was sung locally by pub singers, by three veteran practitioners.
All three performers were predominantly land workers, although Bob Hart did spend quite a lot of time at sea as a trawlerman, which undoubtedly had some bearing on his repertoire. All were born in the 1890s. Their repertoires collectively stretch back into the Nineteenth Century, showing a considerable continuity with the past. Not that this is surprising, given the nature of the tradition they were part of. On that basis this album is a valuable addition to the many that Topic Records released in the 1970s, dealing with East Anglian traditions, as well as elsewhere. So, what we have here is a pair of LPs of local traditional singing, from an area which still had a vibrant tradition within living memory and of which these men were prime practitioners. They probably would not be a good starting point for someone curious but inexperienced with reference to this tradition, being rather austere as they are, but to enthusiasts they contain riches a-plenty. Certainly they are vital to anyone interested in the singing tradition in east Suffolk, or indeed in East Anglia more generally.
Chris Holderness June 2026
Notes:
1. Four of the singers – Geoff Ling, Percy Ling, Bob Hart and Percy Webb – all appear on The Larks They Sang Melodious Transatlantic XTRA XTRS 1141 which is a record of a meeting of the ‘tradition’ and the ‘revival’ – reviewed in a previous newsletter
3. Johnny Doughty: Round Rye Bay for More – Traditional Songs From the Sussex Coast 12TS324, released in 1977
4. As No 2, above
5. A great many recordings were released by Peter Kennedy on Folktrax and Neil Lanham on the Helions Bumpstead Gramophone Company label, but none are in print. Of interest and available are: Good Order! Ladies and Gentlemen Please Veteran VT140CD (Recordings from Eastbridge Eel’s Foot) and The Barley Mow Topic TSCD676D (Peter Kennedy recordings and Blaxhall Ship film)
6. See: Ginette Dunn: The Fellowship of Song Croom Helm, 1980. CD collections of Keith Summers’ local recordings are Good Hearted Fellows Veteran VT154CD, 2006, and A Story to Tell Musical Traditions MTCD339-0 (2 CD set), 2007. Reviews of both can be found at mustrad.mainlynorfolk.info See also note 7
7. Two LPs: The Earl Soham Slog: Step Dance and Country Music From Suffolk Topic 12TS374, 1978, and Sing, Say and Play: Traditional Songs and Music From Suffolk 12TS375, 1978
8. The LP sleeve notes by Ginette Dunn give much information about the family, as does her book – No 6, above
9. Information about song ‘ownership’ is also discussed in the sleeve notes and book, as No 6, above
10. A good comparison version of Fagin the Cobbler is Charlie Stringer’s Kibosh the Cobbler on Who Owns the Game? Home-Made Music HMM LP 302, 1984, and Veteran VT130CD, 2001 – reviewed in a previous newsletter. Bob Hart’s version of Underneath Her Apron can be heard on Bob Hart: Songs from Suffolk Topic 12TS225, 1973
11. As No 2, above. The album is Mary Ann Carolan: Songs From the Irish Tradition Topic 12TS362, 1982
12. As No 10, above
13. A good comparison is Roy Last’s version on HMM LP 302 / VT130CD, as No 10, above
14. The two Ernest Austin tracks were reissued on Harry Green and Other Essex Singers Veteran VT135CD, released in 2010
Saturday 6th June saw the Suffolk village of Laxfield celebrate 800 years of being granted a market, the charter having been bestowed by Henry III in 1226. The East Anglian Traditional Music Trust was invited to provide a musical aspect and so several of us descended upon the village in some decidedly unsettled weather, in order to oblige. The setting was suitably historic as the marketplace sits alongside the sixteenth century Royal Oak pub, and is also sandwiched between the Guildhall, of a similar age, and the largely fourteenth century church.
The Unthank Irregulars’ repertoire is certainly not of that antiquity but we did work our way through a broad selection of country dance tunes, the great majority of which have a local provenance. Fiddle, dulcimer and banjo provided the sound, taking our cue perhaps from the iconic English Country Music recordings of Walter Bulwer, Billy Cooper, et al. Various stalls provided the backdrop, despite unhelpful squalls disrupting the proceedings to an extent, from time to time. There was much interest overall and quite a few youngsters delighted in having a go with a small melodeon or step dancing.
At 3.00, despite the threat of rain – which didn’t materialise at this point – we adjourned to the churchyard for maypole dancing (yes, not quite seasonal, but nearly!) Much enthusiasm for this, including from several adults – thus ensuring the continued fertility of the village for the future (hopefully!) Unfortunately another round of music in the marketplace was cut short by winds so fierce they blew the line of stall tents across the road and almost up against the guildhall. This ended the afternoon’s proceedings.
All was not over though, despite steady rain now beginning to fall. The venue changed to TheKing’s Head – The Low House – on the other side of the churchyard, for Rumburgh Morris to demonstrate their prowess, which they did very effectively and with spectacular display, in the covered area of the pub’s garden. Lavishly decked-out, they worked their way through a good selection of dances, to a fairly sizeable band; all was greatly appreciated by the considerable number of people seated around the dancing area.
In all, it was a very enjoyable way to help the Laxfield villagers celebrate their historic day, in some beautiful surroundings, despite some malignant efforts by the weather to try to wreck the proceedings; the various musical aspects seem to have been greatly enjoyed and appreciated by the locals and hopefully the Trust’s involvement in the event helped to further awareness of our local musical heritage and arouse some curiosity concerning it.
