Author: Andy Turner

Sam Willett

Samuel Willett, 1831-1902

Sam Willett was born at Fulking in Sussex in 1831. When he left the Free School at Henfield, his father Edward – who worked as a shoemaker and grocer at Edburton – taught him bootmaking, but he subsequently learned the craft of baking, and was set up as the village baker in Cuckfield probably by the mid-1850s1; at the time of the 1861 census his occupation was given as “Baker…employing 1 boy”.

His obituary in the Mid-Sussex Times, 10th June 1902, gave this account:

Not caring much for cobbling Mr Willett went to Ditchling to learn baking. After a time, owing to his health breaking down, he had to return home. His ability to write music becoming known to the late Mr. Ambrose Dumsday, Bandmaster of the Cuckfield Old Band, he invited him to join the Band, which he did, and played the tenor trombone. This was in 1850.

The Band was composed of eight members, and they practised once a week at what was then known as the Talbot Tap. Finding the walk from Fulking to Cuckfield too long and tiring a journey [10 miles each way, a 3 hour walk], Mr. Willett had serious thoughts of leaving the Band. Mr Dumsday [also landlord of the Talbot], loathe to lose his services, looked about to see if he could get him something to do in Cuckfield, the result being that Mr Willett took over the baker’s business carried on by a man named Taylor, and by sheer hard work and perseverance got a good deal of patronage.2

As well as the trombone, Sam Willett played the cello in the church band, and was well known as a fiddler for local dances. He came to the attention of Lucy Broadwood, and after she sent him a copy of her father’s Sussex Songs in 1890, he supplied her with over 30 songs. One of these was ‘John Appleby’, which he had heard sung by Kentish hop-pickers.

Sam Willett died at Cuckfield on 5th June 1902, at the age of 71.

  1. When Willett’s bakery was auctioned after his death, the advertisement referred to an “Old-
    established baking & corn business carried on by the Deceased for upwards of 45 years”.
    Mid Sussex Times, 15 July 1902, p4. ↩︎
  2. Quoted from Andy Revell and Malcolm Davison, Cuckfield Connections, 1902: Cuckfield Baker Samuel Willett – music, smugglers and dishonest nightwatchmen https://www.cuckfieldconnections.org.uk/post/1902-cuckfield-baker-samuel-willett-music-smugglers-and-dishonest-nightwatchmen ↩︎

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John Appleby

Sent by Samuel Willett, Cuckfield, Sussex to Lucy Broadwood

Lucy Broadwood and J A Fuller Maitland, English County Songs, Leadenhall Press, London, 1893.

Roud 1292

John ApplebyDownload

“From Samuel Willett, Cuckfield, Sussex, who got it from Kentish hop-pickers.”

Sam Willett, “the singing baker of Cuckfield”, sent a number of songs to Lucy Broadwood. The original copy of ‘John Appleby’ is missing from the Broadwood manuscript collection held by the EFDSS, but was most likely sent to her by Willett on 15th October 1891, accompanying a letter which states “I enclose a Yorkshire ditty also a Kentish one” (https://archives.vwml.org/records/LEB/2/89).  

Lucy Broadwood wrote in English County Songs

“This is not improbably a political song, directed against Oliver Cromwell; Kent produced many squibs upon him, in which, beside being called a brewer, he was frequently described as a drunkard, together with his wife, who was nicknamed Joan”.

However Robert B. Waltz notes that “This would seem a lot more believable if a copy could be found from before the nineteenth century, considering that Oliver Cromwell died in 1658!” (https://balladindex.org/Ballads/BrMa132.html)

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Lucy Broadwood

Lucy Etheldred Broadwood, 1858-1929

Lucy Broadwood was born at Melrose in Scotland. Her father Henry was a partner in the well-known Broadwood piano manufacturing company, senior partner from 1861 until his death. In 1864 the family moved to Lyne House, the Broadwood family home near Rusper,on the Surrey-Sussex border.

A talented singer and pianist, Lucy’s interest in folk song was prompted by her uncle, the Reverend John Broadwood, who had assembled a collection of sixteen songs, privately published in 1847, with the title Old English Songs, As Now Sung by the Peasantry of the Weald of Surrey and Sussex, and Collected by One Who Has Learnt Them by Hearing Them Sung Every Christmas from Early Childhood, by the Country People, Who Go About to the Neighbouring Houses, Singing, or “Wassailing” as It is Called, at that Season. This was republished by Lucy as Sussex Songs in 1889, in an expanded edition which included a number of songs which Lucy herself had collected by in the 1880s, and at least one collected by her father.

Having established links with other folk song enthusiasts, notably Sabine Baring-Gould in the West Country, in 1893 – a full decade before Cecil Sharp or Vaughan Williams began their collecting activities – she was able to publish English County Songs. This was edited with John Alexander Fuller Maitland (1856–1936), a music critic and writer who was also a relative of Lucy Broadwood, and a close friend throughout her life. This book attempted to present at least one song associated with each county. Kent is represented by just one song, ‘John Appleby’. In common with a number of other songs in the book, this was not collected directly by Broadwood, but had been sent to her by a correspondent – in this case, by Samuel Willett, “the singing baker of Cuckfield”, in Sussex. Willett had heard it sung by “Kentish hop-pickers”.

In 1898 Broadwood was one of the 110 founding members of the Folksong Society. She became honorary secretary in 1904 and played an important role in establishing the new body, making frequent contributions to its Journal. Her collecting activities took place primarily in Sussex; she does not appear to have collected any songs in Kent. However she was sent four songs with Kentish connections by Mrs Lucy Grahame of St Leonards in Sussex, while Ella Bull of Cottenham in Cambridgeshire sent her a version of ‘Spencer the Rover’, collected “from a Kentish man and woman”.

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Mother, mother, make my bed

From Mrs Ford

Collected by Anne Geddes Gilchrist, Blackham, Sussex, June 1906

Anne Gilchrist MSS Collection AGG/8/48, AGG/3/6/2a, Journal of the Folk-Song Society 5 (1915) pp.135-137

Roud 32444

AGG-8-48 Mother mother make my bedDownload

This song was included in the Penguin Book of English Folk Songs. The editors, Ralph Vaughan Williams and A.L. Lloyd, wrote:

There has been some argument whether this ballad derives from Lady Maisry or Lord Lovel. The manner of the lady’s impending death, which would provide the essential clue, is missing. We do not know whether she is to be put to death on account of her disgrace (like Lady Maisry) or is pining for her lover’s absence (like Lord Lovel’s sweetheart). It hardly matters. In the version of Mrs Ford, a Sussex blacksmith’s wife, the ballad is a good one.

‘Lady Maisry’ is Roud 45, Child 65, while Lord Lovel is Roud 48, Child 75. In fact this song has now been ascribed a separate Roud number, 32444. Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, who recorded a version of the song from the gipsy singer Queen Caroline Hughes, asserted that it was “made up of floater-verses from a number of ballads and yet does not appear to be derived from any particular one”. The ballads in question being: ‘Lady Maisry’ (Child 65), ‘Lord Lovel’ (Child 75), ‘Little Musgrave’ (Child 81), ‘The Knight and Shepherd’s Daughter’ (Child 110), ‘Child Maurice’ (Child 83), ‘Fair Mary of Wallington’ (Child 91), ‘Bonny Barbara Allen’ (Child 84), ‘Fair Margaret and Sweet William’ (Child 74), ‘The Gypsy Laddie’ (Child 200) and ‘Geordie’ (Child 209).  “What does stand out,” they wrote, “and make this song unique, is that a whole series of ballad formulas have been selected and put together in a form which has remained stable”.1

  1. Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, Travellers’ Songs from England and Scotland, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977, pp.112-15 ↩︎
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