William Leader, 1929 –

Born in New Jersey, his parents Bill and Lou were Londoners and the family returned to the UK in 1931. Ten years later the engineering firm for whom his father worked moved to Keighley in West Yorkshire, and it was here that Bill spent his teens and early twenties. Inheriting his father’s left wing political outlook, in the 1950s Bill sang with the Workers’ Music Association in Bradford, and sold WMA records sent up from London. In 1955 he moved to London to work for Films of Poland, part of the Polish Cultural Institute:

It was part of the cultural exchange. If you let us have a cultural institute in London, so that our folks can come and spy on you, we’ll let you have a British Council in Warsaw, so your folks can come in and spy on us, in a gentlemanly sort of way.¹

Having volunteered for the Workers’ Music Association, towards the end of 1956 Bill was appointed to a new post: production manager for Topic Records. Topic had begun life as the Topic Record Club, where WMA members would receive a monthly 78rpm disc through the post – these included music recordings of ‘The Internationale’, satirical songs (often from Unity Theatre productions) such as Paddy Ryan’s ‘The Man Who Put The Water In The Workers’ Beer’, Soviet songs performed by Russian choirs and balalaika ensembles, and both Russian and British folk songs performed by The Topic Singers. Resuming operations after the war, the WMA / Topic output featured compositions by Shostakovich, numerous recordings of choirs from Eastern Europe and China, several discs of songs performed by Paul Robeson and, from 1953 onwards, performers from the post-war British folk revival, notably Ewan MacColl. Bill Leader’s first assignment as a recording engineer was to record the singer A.L. (Bert) Lloyd, and the concertina player Alf Edwards. From the late 1950s to the early 1970s Bill was responsible for recording a great number of 10 inch and 7 inch records – and eventually 12 inch LPs – for Topic Records. Early recordings featured leading artists of the time, such as Ewan MacColl, Dominic Behan, A.L. Lloyd, Louis Killen and the Ian Campbell Folk Group. At the same time Bill Leader was recording engineer on some of the first releases on Nat Joseph’s Transatlantic label, including the LPs Songs Of Love, Lust And Loose Living and Putting Out The Dustbin, both of which featured Stephen Sedley as a performer and/or arranger.

He was actually only a paid employee of Topic for a few years, as the company discovered that they could not afford to pay both Gerry Sharp, the general secretary, and Bill Leader. So Leader took a job at Collett’s record shop (a massively important part of the contemporary folk and blues scene, both as a source of records, and a meeting place for those involved in the scene), but carried on working as a sound engineer for Topic and Transatlantic on a casual, voluntary basis. This does not appear to have diminished the number of recording projects on which he worked, nor the importance of some of the records with which his name is linked. Not that these recordings were necessarily made in sophisticated surroundings – for instance The Watersons’ hugely influential Topic LP Frost And Fire was, like numerous others at this period, recorded in Bill Leader’s bedroom, while John Renbourn’s recollections of early recordings for Transatlantic had Bill “coming over to a pad I shared with Bert Jansch, setting up the tape machine in the sink and having us play in the broom cupboard”.²

He also went out with portable (or at least, transportable) recording equipment to make field recordings. These included the songs issued by Topic as The Roving Journeymen (12T84, 1962), featuring recordings of traveller Tom Willett and his sons Chris and Ben. The songs were recorded by Bill Leader and Paul Carter at Tom Willett’s home on a caravan site near Ashford, Middlesex in 1962.

In 1966 he helped the prolific collector Mike Yates make his first recordings of an English traditional singer:

Bill Leader, Topic’s recording engineer (and a man who taught me a lot about recording techniques), collected Fred en-route to my parent’s pub in Altringham.  We recorded the album -‘Songs of a Shropshire Farm Worker’, Topic 12T150 – in my bedroom over a couple of days.³

In 1969 Bill set up his own record company, and over the coming decade he released many records which have come to be recognised as classics. The Trailer label featured some of the cream of the 1970s folk revival – John Kirkpatrick, Nic Jones, Dick Gaughan, Mike and Lal Waterson, Christy Moore and Swan Arcade, to name just a few. The Leader label, meanwhile was dedicated to recordings of traditional singers and musicians. Many of these recordings were made by Bill himself. For instance: the first two LPs by Norfolk singer Walter Pardon; A Song for Every Season, the 4 disc box set  presenting the songs of the Copper family of Rottingdean in Sussex; and an LP by London Irish fiddle player Martin Byrnes, which was recorded by Bill at Reg Hall’s mum’s house in Croydon. Leader also put out LPs of other collectors’ recordings – for example, A People’s Carol, featuring Ian Russell’s recordings of carol singing in South Yorkshire pubs, and Percy Grainger’s 1908 phonograph recordings of Lincolnshire singers on the LP Unto Brigg Fair. Sadly, Bill Leader sold the labels to a company which then ran into financial difficulties and sold the business on once more. The result being that these classic LPs have been unavailable since the early 1980s; inexplicably none has ever been properly released on CD by the current owners.

Bill Leader’s life and times (and those of contemporaries with whom he came into contact) are being documented in fascinating detail by Mike Butler, in a projected 10-volume biography, Sounding the Century⁴. Of the volumes so far published, Volume 3 The Poor Man’s Only Music has proved particularly useful when writing articles for the Kent Trad website, covering as it does the activities of folk song collectors such as Reg Hall, Peter Kennedy and Paul Carter, and the background to the recording of LPs by the Willet family and Phoebe Smith.

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1. Bill Leader, quoted in Mike Butler, Sounding the Century, Volume 1, Glimpses of far off things: 1855-1956, pp180-181 ↩︎
2. John Renbourn, quoted on the Folk Blues and Beyond website, http://www.folkblues.co.uk/artistsrenbourn.htm ↩︎
3. Mike Yates, Time Has Made a Change – some reflections, Musical Traditions, 2021, https://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/time-change.htm ↩︎
4. See https://www.soundingthecentury.com/ ↩︎

Sir Stephen John Sedley, 1939–

Sir Stephen Sedley is a distinguished lawyer who has served as a High Court judge, a Lord Justice of Appeal (i.e. a judge of the Court of Appeal, the second highest level of judge in the courts of England and Wales), and a Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Oxford. He was called to the Bar in 1964. Prior to that, having graduated from Cambridge in 1961, he worked as a musician and translator (this is according to his entry in Who’s Who, where his recreations are listed as “carpentry, music, changing the world”). During this period he collaborated with Nathan Joseph, a contemporary at Queen’s College, Cambridge, who had set up the Transatlantic record company. The first releases on Transatlantic were three volumes of Live With Love, “A comprehensive guide to sexual behaviour. The facts… the problems… the answers… by Doctor Keith Cammeron; One of Britain’s foremost authorities on Marriage Guidance” (actually a pseudonym for the sex therapist Dr. Eustace Chesser). However, having met Bill Leader, Nat Joseph developed an interest in folk music, and this became Transatlantic’s speciality. Stephen Sedley was involved with several early releases on the label, beginning with Songs Of Love, Lust And Loose Living, which featured singer Isla Cameron and actor Tony Britton; Sedley played guitar. Subsequently he contributed “guitar, lute, and what he euphemistically calls arrangements” to Putting Out The Dustbin, a collection of songs written by Sydney Carter, performed by Carter and Sheila Hancock, and recorded on the day the Cuba missile crisis reached its climax.

Stephen was also one of the performers on a  1964 release, Vote For Us, credited to “Herbert Floog – a pseudonym which conceals 7 of Britain’s top comedians, 6 of whom are not Peter Sellers (The seventh is not Peter Sellers either)”. The LP featured songs by Leon Rosselson, Stephen Sedley and Nathan Joseph, performed by Chris Hilton, James E. Butchart, Leon Rosselson, Liane Aukin, Ralph Trainer, Sam Hutt (who later would become better known as Hank Wangford), and Stephen Sedley. The record sleeve informed the potential purchaser that “This Record is about British politics, particularly in the period before an election. Like British politics it is at times cheap, nasty and sordid, scurrilous, lunatic, unbelievable and wildly funny” and that it had been “Recorded at a safe distance from a captive audience at Olympic Studios W.1.”.

As a spin-off from these recordings Nat Joseph organised a series of one-off concerts, at the Mermaid Theatre and the Lyric, Hammersmith, and once again Sedley was involved in these. He recalls “I became involved, partly as arranger, partly as accompanist, in a series of unrepeatable concerts. The first and perhaps the most remarkable featured Robert Graves, then living in Mallorca and still vigorous and handsome”. Isla Cameron was a friend of Graves, and she persuaded him to take part in the event. He read his own poems, and was also persuaded to sing trench songs he remembered from the First World War. Other concerts promoted around this time by Nat Joseph featured Spike Milligan, the Australian comic actor Bill Kerr, Welsh writer Gwyn Thomas, and the then poet laureate Cecil Day Lewis.

In 1964 Sedley provided readers of The Observer with a critical summary of songwriters on the contemporary British folk scene in an article headed ‘The Folk Laureates’. The songwriters mentioned include Johnny Handle, Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, Leon Rosselson, Stan Kelly, Matt McGinn and John Foreman.¹ Sedley was also a fan of the young Bob Dylan, whom he had met in 1962 at the Troubadour on Old Brompton Road in London. He recounted this meeting in the collection Dylan at 80², summarised in this review of the book

Among the more personal recollections of and reflections on Dylan, readers can delight in Stephen Sedley’s tale of a brief encounter with Dylan at a London club in 1962, in the days of Cuban Missile Crisis, when Dylan was recognized as a new American star and asked to play. Dylan borrowed Stephen Sedley’s guitar and fell into the ongoing session. The beauty of Sedley’s account is that he confesses his memory may have added something and subtracted something else; but the memory is his, as are the youthfully old-fashioned reviews he writes about Dylan’s London concerts in 1964 and 1965.³

Not immediately apparent from the paragraphs above is Stephen Sedley’s deep interest in traditional song. However, at the same time as participating in Nat Joseph’s LPs and concerts he was researching the material which would appear in his book The Seeds of Love, a collection of traditional songs on the subject of love, published by Essex Music, in association with the EFDSS, in 1967. A successor volume, Who killed Cock Robin?, containing songs of crime and punishment, did not appear until 2021, edited jointly with Martin Carthy. In the Preface to the latter collection Sedley wrote:

It was in those early years, when I was supposed to be studying law and starting out in practice as a barrister, that my interest in folk song brought me into contact with a number of traditional and revival musicians.

[…]

In addition to library research, as a young barrister I would go to rural Kent to defend Travellers, evicted and barred from their traditional camping grounds on the commons, against repeated charges under the legislation then in force of ‘being a gypsy encamped on a highway’. Getting charges thrown out because the police initially couldn’t work out how to prove the accused was a Gypsy gave me a local status and an introduction to some fine singers. One of these, Joe Saunders, an old poacher and bird-breeder who lived mostly on Biggin Hill, turned out to have a large repertoire of prison, poaching and transportation songs, some of which, with the help of the Uher reel-to-reel tape recorder I carried in my car boot, appear in this book.

 The first field recordings which Sedley made were of Frank and Margaret Birkett, at Elterwater in the Lake District, in September 1965. The circumstances which led to him recording Joe Saunders, and other travellers in Kent, are given in a document which Sedley prepared in August 2023:

I was called to the Bar in November 1964. Within a year or so I was briefed by the solicitor Peter Kingshill⁴ to appear at Croydon Quarter Sessions on a batch of 32 appeals, to be listed together, against convictions and fines for “being a gipsy encamped on a highway”. This was a specific offence first enacted in the mid-19th century and reproduced in the 1959 Highways Act. It has since been repealed.

Travellers, with no access to legal advice, used to simply take such prosecutions as a fact of life. But they were becoming more oppressive as local authorities took advantage of a power, newly created in 1962, to ditch and fence the commons on which Travellers had camped for centuries, without exercising the associated power to open properly laid-out permanent sites. Large numbers of caravans were consequently forced on to the grass verges of main roads, a danger both to traffic and to Travellers’ children, more than one of whom had been killed.

A local architect, Brian Richardson, a leading member of the NCCL, persuaded 32  recently convicted Travellers to consult Peter Kingshill. Peter obtained legal aid, gave notices of appeal, and sent me the appeal brief.

Appeals to quarter sessions were conducted as a full rehearing. With my agreement the prosecuting counsel, Neil Dennison (a decent man, later to be Common Serjeant at the Old Bailey) took a single case, I think that of Abraham Cooper, and called evidence simply that Abe was living in a caravan on the grass verge of the A21. I submitted that there was no evidence that Abe was a gipsy, whether that was taken to signify an ethnic origin or a way of life. The court agreed and allowed the appeal. Dennison thereupon conceded the other 31, and I became an undeserving local hero.

The privilege this earned me was a welcome in any caravan in the Edenbridge area. Abe introduced me to his parents, Joe and Lena Cooper, who readily talked and sang for me as I ran the Uher.

Sedley recorded not just songs from Joe and Lena Cooper, but reminiscences about their lives – notably, Joe’s vivid but unsentimental memories of his time in active service during the First World War.

The Coopers were insistent that I should record their kinsman Joe Saunders . Joe’s caravan, which he shared with his grown-up daughter Liza, was stationed on farmland on Biggin Hill with the agreement of a friendly farmer. I visited him there at least twice in 1965-7.

Sedley recorded 20 songs from Joe Saunders – “Joe wouldn’t sing a note without a quart of cider, but once this was provided he was unstoppable”. The collection The Seeds of Love was largely completed by the time he met Joe, but Sedley was able to include his tune for the song  ‘Love is pleasing’, while there are seven songs from Joe’s repertoire in Who Killed Cock Robin?

The original court case which gained Sedley access to the Kentish gypsies’ camps was reported thus in the Sevenoaks Chronicle and Kentish Advertiser, 17^th June 1966:

‘GIPSY’ ON HIGHWAY CASE IS DISMISSED

Sevenoaks Magistrates dismissed a charge against a 40-year old man that, he being a gipsy, illegally camped on the highway at Dunton Green, when his case came before the court for a second time on Friday.

Earlier, the case, involving Abraham Cooper of a caravan at No Man’s Land, Dane Bottom, Dunton Green, was adjourned to consider a submission by defending counsel, Mr. Stephen Sedley, that Cooper had already been proved not to be a gipsy.

When the case was resumed on Friday the Magistrates upheld his submission and dismissed the charge of camping at Dane Bottom on March 30.

A further charge of obstructing the highway at the same place. with his caravan, on April 22, was upheld, but Cooper was given an absolute discharge in view of “mitigating circumstances”.

‘Impossible’

Prosecuting in the latter case, Mr. A. C. Staples said Cooper had parked his caravan on a triangle of grass and had been there since late last year.

Defending counsel. Mr. Sedley suggested that this piece of land could not be considered to be part of the highway.

A member of the Sevenoaks Gipsy Resettlement Committee, Mr. Brian Richardson of Greenways, Knockholt, told the court, “It is absolutely impossible for these people to find anywhere to go. It is hopeless.”

Cooper said, “I had nowhere else to go. Whatever district we are in the police tell us to go back where the others are.”

It was explained in court that the Kent County Council had towed several caravans on to the grass there, but Cooper had not been among these.

Sedley’s successful defence in this case did not end the harassment which gypsies faced:

After the initial group of successful appeals, the police resorted to ordinary highway obstruction summonses, with occasional forays into establishing gipsy status (“I have known the accused for x years, your worships. He lives in a caravan and follows a peripatetic way of life.”) To keep the fines down we would plead guilty and hope that the Sevenoaks bench was going to be chaired that day by the decent magistrate who imposed moderate fines and not the choleric colonel who behaved as if he was conducting a court martial.

On one occasion, Sedley called Pastor John Lywood as a defence witness, although he came to regret this. Lywood, born to affluence, had joined the RAF in World War II and flown 49 missions as a bomb aimer, mostly in Wellington bombers. After the war he managed two hundred Whitbread pubs in Kent, which provided him with “more money than I could spend” – although he tried his best, buying race horses and fast cars. However, having undergone a religious experience in 1953, he set up his Evangelical Free Church, holding meetings initially in Goudhurst and Brenchley village halls. After a while his middle-class congregation began to drift away, and he set his sights on the Romany community. Despite his posh accent, he attracted quite a following among the Kent gypsies.

In their lorries and carts they drove to Lywood’s church and he baptised them one by one in a rusting bath, clad in a large white nightshirt. “Borned again”, as the Romanies termed it, had to mean more, however, than Bible readings and prayers. They had to give up fortune-telling and putting curses on those who would not cross a palm with silver. Walking in the paths of righteousness proved difficult for some who, with limited educational opportunities, often had to turn to their minister for help with letters to social workers, the police and courts, and for prison visits. They continued to be impressed by what they saw as his healing powers. Once he had appeared to have saved the life of a Romany who was in the final stages of cancer, the legendary status of the man they called “Pastor Eyewood” was assured among them.⁵

Lywood continued his ministry until 1995, although gypsies continued to consult him even when, because of Parkinson’s disease, he had to move into a care home. His obituary records that on at least one occasion his appearance in court did succeed in reducing a gypsy’s sentence. However this was not the case when Stephen Sedley invited him into the witness box:

On one occasion Peter [Kingshill] arrived at court in high spirits: “I’ve got a clergyman who’s prepared to give evidence in mitigation.” It was Pastor Lywood. Being inexperienced, I put him in the witness box without any prior discussion and asked him what he could tell the court about the circumstances of the defendants.

Lywood didn’t hesitate. He launched into a sermon about the flames of torment that awaited magistrates who oppressed the poor. Neither the chairman nor I could stop him or distract him. The fines were colossal.

Some time later one of the old hands at Croydon quarter sessions said to me: “Didn’t anybody tell you, my boy? There are two iron rules: never call the solicitor, never call the parson.”

The relevant case would appear to be this one, described in the Sevenoaks Chronicle and Kentish Advertiser, 24^th February 1967 when, in fact, not one but two clergymen spoke up for the defendants: 

Vicar speaks in gipsies’ defence

The Vicar of Riverhead, the Rev. G. K. St. John Potter, appeared as a defence witness at Sevenoaks on Tuesday when three gipsies were found guilty of a total 80 obstruction offences.

In court were 23-year-old George Ripley, Tom Smith, 28, and Levi Smith, 50, who pleaded not guilty to the charges.

P-c. Harris told the court he had seen two caravans parked on the grass verge at Croydon Road, Westerham, on November 29. He spoke to one of the owners, Levi Smith, who refused to move when asked.

On a subsequent visit he interviewed another caravan owner, Tom Smith, who was also parked on the verge. Smith told the constable: “If I had somewhere to go, I would.”

Later P-c. Harris saw the third man, George Ripley, who said: “There is nowhere we can go. We have come from Dartford and it’s dangerous there.”

At a further interview with the caravan owners, Tom Smith commented: “They ought to get a gun and shoot us all.”

NO ALTERNATIVE

Questioned by defence counsel, Mr. Stephen Sedley, Mr. Potter said he knew Levi Smith and in his opinion he had broken the law because he had no alternative.

“I am quite sure he would be willing to accept an alternative if one was available,” he said.

A Free Church minister from Goudhurst, Mr. Charles Lywood, told the court he knew all three men. “It is only through necessity that they are there. I am sure they would be prepared to pay rent if a proper site was available to them.”

Asked by acting chairman Mr. K. Ritchie if this was witness’s own opinion or an impression given by the defendants, Mr. Lywood said: “My work takes me into contact with caravan dwellers of every kind.

Ripley was fined £13 on 26 charges, Tom Smith and Levi Smith were each fined £13 10s. of 27 charges.

Sedley continued to represent gypsies in court cases. For example the Kent Messenger, 8^th November 1968 reported on that week’s Kent Sessions:

THE CHAIRMAN (Mr. Montague Berryman Q.C.), reserved judgment in an appeal by 71-year-old Mrs. Rose Ripley, mother of 14, who lives in a caravan at the side of the A2, Watling Street, at Stone, near Dartford.

Mrs. Ripley appealed against her conviction by Dartford magistrates for encamping on the highway.

Mr. Stephen Sedley, for Mrs. Ripley, submitted that she had “lawful excuse” to be there. Her caravan had been towed there three years ago by a local authority. She had no method of being towed away and literally had nowhere else to go.

A few weeks later, he was once again representing Levi Smith, this time with his brother Jasper. The following report appeared in the Sevenoaks Chronicle and Kentish Advertiser, 6^th December 1968:

GIPSIES FACE 58 CHARGES

Two gipsies, defended by counsel at a nominal fee from an anonymous person faced a total of 58 charges of obstructing the free passage of the highway when they appeared at Sevenoaks magistrates’ court on Friday.

They are Levi and Jasper Smith of no fixed abode, both living in caravans on Croydon Road near Westerham.

They pleaded not guilty, but were found guilty on all charges and fined 15s. per charge, a total of £43 10s.

Levi Smith faced 48 charges, Jasper 10. Their counsel was Mr. Stephen Sedley.

At the conclusion of the case the magistrates, headed by Mr. E. Comer allowed a certificate of legal aid, and made no order as to costs.

Stephen Sedley’s father Bill (1910-1985), a lifelong communist, had operated a legal advice service in the East End of London. He was particularly known for his defence of tenants’ rights in the late 1930s, and for providing support for squatters’ rights and mortgage strikes after the Second World War. Stephen also took on cases where he represented tenants’ rights, for instance on behalf of the North Kensington Law Centre.

When the Law Centre was founded in 1970, I had been a barrister for little more than five years. But because my father, Bill Sedley, had been what was called a Poor Man’s Lawyer in Bow in the 1930s and was one of the few people who understood the Rent Acts, it was assumed by Peter Kandler and his colleagues that by some form of osmosis I could be trusted to handle the Centre’s landlord and tenant work. My chambers clerk didn’t like the sound of it at all, but it was better than nothing.[6]

Like his father, Stephen Sedley was a member of the Communist party, from 1958 until the early 1980s, leaving the party – perhaps not coincidentally – a year or two before being appointed a Queen‘s Counsel. His appointment as a High Court judge was reported in The Times (15^th September 1992) under the headline “Left-wing barrister joins bench”:

In a clear signal that politics is no bar to judicial appointment, the Lord Chancellor’s department announced yesterday that the leading left-wing barrister Stephen Sedley, QC, has been made a High Court judge.

Mr Sedley, 52, a committed socialist, is a member of Liberty, formerly the National Council for Civil Liberties. He is thought to be the most left-wing Queen’s Counsel to reach the senior ranks of the judiciary.

Widely respected, he has a long record of high-profile cases including the Blair Peach case, the Carl Bridgwater murder trial, the Helen Smith inquest and the Stefan Kisko appeal.

Unsurprisingly, his judgments have not always been well received in some sections of the popular press. For example, in 1995 the Daily Express (always inclined to take umbrage at judicial decisions with which it does not agree) published an opinion piece under the headline “Judges are a law unto themselves”, attacking a recent case where Sedley had judged that Home Secretary Michael Howard’s decision to ban the Moonie leader Sun Myung Moon from Britain was unlawful. Moreover,

Three months ago, in another landmark ruling, he gave gypsies and travellers squatting on local authority land partial protection against the anti-trespass measures contained in the 1994 Criminal Justice Bill. And yesterday, fellow judge, Mr Justice Latham used that ruling to curb the right of local authorities wishing to use planning laws to evict gypsies or travellers from unauthorised campsites.

Both judges base their decisions on what they call “the human factor” (Latham) and “considerations of common humanity” (Sedley). All well and good. Except that such words are not in the relevant Acts.

These judges are, in effect, summarily ammending (sic) legislation passed by Parliament. This is happening more and more: and is both wrong and dangerous.⁶

Sedley has sometimes been able to make use of his legal expertise in the sphere of folk song. For instance, each section of the book Who killed Cock Robin? is prefaced with a brief introduction which provides the legal, historical and social context, and considers whether the sympathies expressed in traditional song were in tune with, or at odds with, the law (in the case of sexual assault, the editors make the telling point that “folk song displays much the same ambivalence, much the same moralism and much the same hypocrisy as are encountered in modern societies”). Each song also has notes, which frequently highlight a legal dimension of the crime in question – for example, does McCaffery’s shooting of his colonel instead of his captain offer him any defence in law? might Lord Barnard receive a reduced sentence under Scots law because he was provoked by his wife’s infidelity with Little Musgrave?

In the 1960s he examined the question of copyright and folk song. An article titled ‘Who Owns Folksong?’ was published in Books: The Journal of the National Book League, No. 358, March-April 1965, pp44-52. And in a 1974 interview with the singer and researcher A.L. Lloyd, Lloyd mentions that a committee had been established by the English Folk Dance and Song Society looking into the question of copyright, with Sedley as one of the members.

What happened was that some three years ago, partly as a result of Topic Records wanting some legal clarification about responsibility for rights on traditional material because so many people were claiming copyright fees on traditional material.  Partly as a result of that, Stephen Sedley and myself began to look into the matter and to see if we could sort out some sort of code, as it were, on which the thing might operate.  And we thought it might be a good idea if, indeed, musical folklore, words and melodies, were subject to copyright control but that the fees accruing from that control – or at least the greater proportion of the fees – should go into a common fund – into a national fund if you like – for research and such.

And, at an annual general meeting of the EFDSS, Stephen and I both put this to the meeting quite formally.  A number of people spoke against it, especially Maud Karpeles, as Sharp’s executor – Sharp’s principal executor, because she felt that it was too dangerous to go out of the hands of executors and such.  And she felt that the law as it stood, vague as it was, did give protection to the people who had already devoted time and money to folkmusic collecting.  She spoke against it – the thing ended in stalemate then, but has constantly nagged at some people on the executive of the EFDSS.

And so, the executive asked for this matter to be revived and for a committee to be formed who can make recommendations, which can then be presented to parliament to see whether it can’t become statutory.  And that is what we are working towards.  And we intend ultimately to draw up a document, which can go to parliament.⁷

Dave Arthur summarises the outcome of this work in his very readable biography of Lloyd:

The EFDSS deliberations on copyright were forwarded to the Whitford Committee, which finally presented The Report of the Committee to Consider the Law on Copyright and Designs to Parliament in March 1977.The EFDSS wanted the law clarified or amended to ensure that ‘it is not possible fort any private individual to, in effect, appropriate for himself or itself what is in its collective and communal property’. The Committee agreed that the mere transcribing of a work [song] should have no protection under copyright law unless the transcriber’s [collector’s] version involves sufficient skill and/or labour to qualify as an original work. Despite such rulings, copyright can still be a legal minefield.⁸

Sedley has been clear that he does not believe that a collector has any copyright in the songs which he or she has collected. Digital copies of his own field recordings have been deposited with both the British Library and the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library.

I met Stephen Sedley at a very early stage of my work on the Kent Trad project. I would like to express my gratitude for his generosity in devoting time to my enquiries, for the informative – and often very entertaining – notes which he has sent me, and for providing me with access to digital copies of his field recordings.

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1. Stephen Sedley. ‘The Folk Laureates’, The Observer Weekend Review, 05 July 1964, p29. ↩︎
2. Dylan at 80: It Used to Go like That, and Now It Goes like This, edited by Gary Browning and Constantine Sandis, Imprint Academic (2021) ↩︎
3. Anne-Marie Mai, review of Dylan at 80, in Dylan Review 4.1 (Spring/Summer 2022), p14 https://thedylanreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Dylan-Review-Vol-4.1-2022-1.pdf ↩︎
4. Peter Kingshill was a Sevenoaks solicitor who represented Gypsies and Travellers regularly over the course of a long career. In a footnote Sedley writes “Getting to know Peter, who had come to Britain as a teenage refugee from Nazi Germany, was one of the bonuses of my work at the Bar. He was the best and kindest of men”. ↩︎
5. John Lywood, obituary, The Times, 17^th December 2007 ↩︎
6. Daily Express, 7^th November 1995 ↩︎
7. Some Reflections: a 1974 interview with Bert Lloyd by Barry Taylor, Musical Traditions, 2019, https://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/lloyd2.htm ↩︎
8. Dave Arthur, Bert: The life and times of A.L. Lloyd, Pluto Press, 2012, pp246-247 ↩︎

Paul Carter, 1932–2012

As an 18 year old, Paul Carter worked on the door of Mick Mulligan’s jazz club in North Cheam. By the late 1950s he had developed an interest in folk song as well as jazz and, with Scotsman Bruce Dunnet (a follower of Ewan MacColl), was running a folk club, Folksong Unlimited, in a central London pub. Having worked for a while in Collector Records, a record shop in Charing Cross Road, he progressed to supervising recordings for the shop’s associated record label. Collector Records specialised in jazz, folk and blues, and put out just a few records each year. Between 1959 and 1964 Carter was involved in recording EPs by traditional Irish and Scots singers such as Joe Heaney and Jeannie Robertson, as well as figures from the folk revival, including Robin Hall, A.L. Lloyd, Shirley Collins, and Bob Davenport and The Rakes, in what was their first ever collaboration. In 1960 Reg Hall of The Rakes (and an important figure in the “discovery” and exposure of rural singers and musicians such as Scan Tester in Sussex, and Walter and Daisy Bulwer in Norfolk) took Carter to a music and song session in Sussex. These sessions, organised by Mervyn Plunkett, but with a major input from Reg Hall, were regular events at the time. Subsequently recordings made by Plunkett were edited by Carter for a Collector EP titled 4 Sussex Singers (Collector Records, JEB 7, March 1961). One of those singers was George Spicer, singing ‘I Wish There Were No Prisons’.

Soon he was also making recordings on behalf of Topic Records. It was Ken Stubbs who initially located and recorded a Romany gypsy family, the Willetts, and brought them to the attention of Topic. They sent Bill Leader and Paul Carter (who had access to better recording equipment than Stubbs) to record them on a caravan site near Ashford in Middlesex, in late 1961. These recordings, of Tom Willett and his sons Chris and Ben, were made available on the Topic LP The Roving Journeymen (12T84, 1962) – a landmark album, as it was the first long-playing record ever released of English traditional singers.

In the autumn of 1962 he went out in company with Ken Stubbs and Steve Pennells, looking for Gypsy singers or musicians to record. The following accounts are reproduced from Philip Heath-Coleman’s notes to the CD Boshamengro (Musical Traditions, MTCD373, 2017):

On Sunday 7 October 1962 Henry Lee – as he is generally remembered by his family and other travellers – was encamped at a favourite stopping place on Marden Plain, near Paddock Wood in Kent, as was his wont at hopping time, as much, apparently, for the occasion as for the work. With him in two unassuming caravans were members of his extended family, including grandchildren and his father-in-law Albert ‘Bullbred’  Smith: some of them at least are said to have travelled from Essex for the season. Returning home at closing time that Sunday afternoon, the men had settled down around the fire with a cup of tea, and Harry may already have taken out his fiddle to entertain the assembled company.

[…]

It was in search of Romany musicians that the collector Ken Stubbs and fiddler Steve Pennells had visited nearby Horsmonden that same Sunday, accompanied by Paul Carter who was there on behalf of Topic Records at Ken Stubbs’s invitation to record any music they found. On another day they might have run into the singers and musicians Minty, Jasper and Levi Smith, cousins of Harry’s wife Sarah Ann – usually known as Sary Ann – or possibly Minty’s husband, the fiddler Frank Smith.

The travellers would usually be in the area for a month or so around the Horse Fair which was held at Horsmonden on the second Sunday in September, to coincide with the hopping season. On the occasion in question Ken and Steve had failed to find any musicians at Horsmonden, but another traveller suggested that they should visit Harry Lee, who was encamped nearby, and persuaded his teenaged son to show them the way.

Carter was able to record 17 tracks in total of Harry Lee playing tunes on the fiddle. Two of these were included on the 1974 Topic LP, Boscastle Breakdown (12T240), and all of the recordings can be found 0n the Musical Traditions CD Boshamengro. Harry Lee is the only Romany fiddler of whom any significant number of recordings exists.

With his wife Angela – also a keen folk singer and musician, and later to become an acclaimed novelist – Paul Carter moved to Bristol and took up a teaching post at the Technical College. He continued to do work for both Collector and Topic – the latter paid him a modest stipend, and he would edit tapes for Topic in his front room. The Carters also started up and ran a couple of folk clubs in Bristol. The second of these, the Folk Song and Ballads club at the Lansdown, pursued a definite policy of favouring traditional songs performed in a traditional manner.

Paul had heard Phoebe Smith sing at Cecil Sharp House in London, and “felt she should be represented in the Topic catalogue. I knew that Frank Purslow knew her quite well and was familiar with her repertoire, so an arrangement was made for Frank and I to visit her. I picked up Frank from Bampton. Frank had decided what Phoebe should be asked to sing. We went to Woodbridge the next day. I was there to press the buttons on my Uher portable, and that’s about all. I’ve no recollection of the visit, but there were things on my mind at the time. It turned out that I had picked up the wrong tape boxes, and what I had was not virgin tape but stuff for recycling. So although these songs played fine on my Uher and on the bigger machine I used for editing, when they got to London the previous recording on them showed through”.¹

This was  in early 1969. Topic decided that the recordings were unusable, so Carter and Purslow went back to Suffolk to record Phoebe again. These recordings were released on Once I Had a True Love, (Topic Records, 12T193, 1970). The LP met a decidedly unfavourable reception in some quarters, with the result that Carter asked Topic to remove his name from the credits. His marriage to Angela Carter had broken down by this point (they divorced in 1972) and Once I Had a True Love appears to have been the last work he did for Topic, or any other recording company. He did however return to taking part in traditional singing events in the years before his death in 2012.

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1. Paul Carter, quoted in Mike Butler, Sounding the Century: Bill Leader & Co. Vol. 3, Troubador, 2023, p172-173 ↩︎

Frank Purslow, né Chapman, 1926–2007

Born in Edgbaston, Frank’s early interest in folk song was reawakened when he moved to London after the Second World War – in particular by the singing of Ewan MacColl and Bert Lloyd, and their Ballads and Blues folk club. It was here that he heard his first traditional singer, Phoebe Smith, whom he subsequently recorded for Topic Records with Paul Carter.

Frank regularly attended events at the EFDSS headquarters Cecil Sharp House, and volunteered in the Society’s Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. It was in the library that he encountered the songs which he recorded with guitarist John Pearse for a 1960 LP entitled Rap-A-Tap-Tap: English Folk Songs Miss Pringle Never Taught Us (when released in the United States the LP was retitled Unexpurgated Songs Of Erotica, although this was presumably a marketing ploy, rather than an indication that the songs on the album are at all shocking). More importantly, it was VWML librarian Sara Jackson who introduced Frank to the manuscript song collections made by Henry and Robert Hammond, mainly in Dorset, and by George Gardiner in Hampshire. Frank indexed these collections, and songs from them were made available – in singable versions – in four very popular and influential songbooks, beginning with Marrow Bones in 1965. Long out of print, these have all now been republished.

Frank moved to Bampton in Oxfordshire in the early 1960s. He fooled, danced and played with two of the village’s three morris sides, and played for almost 30 years in the popular Bampton Barn Dance Band. He died shortly before he was due to receive the EFDSS Gold Badge award; this was presented to his half-brother after the funeral.

Mike Yates, 1943–

Mike Yates is one of the most important post-war collectors. He has recorded singers and musicians in Yorkshire, Scotland and, following in the footsteps of Cecil Sharp, in the Appalachian Mountains of the USA. But the majority of his recordings were made in Southern England, particularly among gypsies and travellers, and while he recorded relatively few singers in Kent itself, he made numerous recordings of singers with Kentish connections.

Mike has written about how he came to be a collector in an article entitled ‘Time Has Made a Change – some reflections’ (Musical Traditions, 2021, https://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/time-change.htm). His interest in folk music was initially sparked by BBC schools radio programmes, the songs sung by his father and grandfather, Peter Kennedy’s As I roved out radio broadcasts, James Reeves’ anthology of folk song words The Idiom of the People, then skiffle and blues. He borrowed a tape recorder, and made his first recordings, while doing Voluntary Service Overseas in the Solomon Islands. On his return to the UK in 1963 he worked in the Sound Library at Cecil Sharp House, the headquarters of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, as an assistant to Peter Kennedy.  His parents bought him a Uher tape recorder in 1964, and he used it to make his first recordings of an English singer:

One of my first song collecting trips was to Shropshire, to visit Fred Jordan.  Fred had previously been recorded for the radio program ‘As I Roved Out’ and had sung in quite a number of folk clubs and festivals.  He was quite used to singing into a microphone and was quite happy for me to record many of his songs.  Shortly afterwards I contacted Topic Records in London and asked if they might like to issue an album.  Gerry Sharp, then Topic’s managing director, liked the idea and Bill Leader, Topic’s recording engineer (and a man who taught me a lot about recording techniques), collected Fred en-route to my parent’s pub in Altringham.  We recorded the album -‘Songs of a Shropshire Farm Worker’, Topic 12T150 – in my bedroom over a couple of days.  

In the mid-1970s numerous LPs of Mike’s field recordings were issued on Topic Records. One of the first of these was the 1974 album Blackberry Fold, which presented a selection from the repertoire of George Spicer (long resident in Sussex, but born and brought up in Little Chart) and several compilation LPs featuring multiple Southern English singers. Among these compilations were Green grow the laurels (two tracks recorded at St Margarets at Cliffe from Jack Goodban), and Songs of the open road and The Travelling Songster, which featured songs and dance tunes recorded from English gypsies. The singers on these albums included  Joe Jones and Bill Ellson (both recorded in Kent), Phoebe Smith (recorded in Suffolk, but born and raised in East Kent), and the siblings Minty, Levi and Jasper Smith, who had spent their lives travelling through Kent and Surrey.

Jasper Smith, Bill Ellson and Joe Jones also appeared on the 1985 Topic album, Travellers, as well as Chris Willett, four of whose songs had appeared on the influential 1962 LP of the Willett Family, The Roving Journeymen. Mike wrote of that earlier LP

This was the album that introduced me to the singing of English Gypsies.  When I started collecting songs from English singers, I quickly remembered this album and, to start with, I used to take it with me to Gypsy camps, playing the tracks to any Gypsy who was interested in listening.  It was a good way of finding out if any of the listeners knew any songs themselves, because they were soon singing along with the Willets.¹

In 1984, on a visit to the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, the then librarian Malcolm Taylor introduced me to Mike Yates, and I arranged for him to come down to Stone-in-Oxney to record Charlie Bridger. These recordings appeared initially on Veteran Tapes releases, but subsequently – like a lot of Mike’s field recordings from the 1960s, 70s and 80s – have been available via releases on the Musical Traditions label. Copies of Mike’s entire sound recording archive are deposited with the British Library and the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library.

Mike was editor of the Folk Music Journal from 1972 to 1980. The 1975 issue was devoted to music of the travelling people, and included an article by Mike, ‘English Gypsy Songs’, in which he provided transcriptions of “a very small percentage of the songs that I have recorded from gypsies in southern England during the period 1972-75”. These included two songs apiece from Levi Smith and Joe Jones. In more recent years he has contributed regularly to the Musical Traditions website, contributing articles on ballads, blues, collectors, and singers and musicians from Britain and North America. In particular he has written about the links between British and American traditions, compiling several CDs featuring British songs recorded from American singers, and songs of American origin which entered the repertoires of British singers.

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1. Mike Yates, Ten Records that Changed my Life, Musical Traditions, 2006, https://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/ten.htm ↩︎

The following appeared in the ‘Thanet Items’ section of the East Kent Times and Mail, 25^th May 1904:

A writer in a county journal says:—”All Kentish people have cause to remember with gratitude a lady who has just passed away at Margate. I refer to Miss de Vaynes, to whom the county is indebted for the existence in collected form of many old Kentish songs and ballads, as well as a large number of fugitive poems relating to Kent. In making this invaluable collection, which is published in two volumes under the title of ‘The Kentish Garland,’ Miss de Vaynes had the benefit of the assistance of the Rev. Joseph Woodfall Ebsworth,  Vicar of Molash, near Ashford, and a great authority on English ballad lore.”

Julia Henrietta Louisa De Vaynes, 1853-1904

Julia De Vaynes was born on 23^rd January 1853, and baptised at the church of St John the Baptist, Margate. Her father, William Angus De Vaynes, had been described in the 1851 census as “Landed proprietor”; her Irish mother Julia, according to a newspaper obituary, “was descended from Conal-Eachwath, King of Munster, A.D. 366” and also from the “royal line of Plantagenet”.¹ She was brought up in the family home of Updown House, St Johns, Margate, and having lived elsewhere in Margate and Ramsgate she returned there towards the end of her life – the 1901 census shows her as “Landowner manor” – and it was there that she died on May 16^th 1904. The Kentish Express, 21^st May 1904 reported her death as follows:

Lovers of old Kentish ballads will hear with deep regret of the death of Miss Julia Henrietta L. De Vaynes, the talented authoress of the “Kentish Garland,” which took place suddenly at Updown House, Margate, on Monday, at the age of fifty-one. Miss De Vaynes was the daughter of the late Captain De Vaynes, and was of Huguenot descent, her ancestors having come to this country after the Revocation of Nantes.

As well as compiling The Kentish Garland she also edited A Huguenot Garland, a collection of Huguenot songs, published in 1890.

Joseph Woodfall Ebsworth

Born on 2^nd September 1824 in Lambeth, Ebsworth trained as an artist, and taught at the Glasgow School of Design before being ordained at York in 1864. He became vicar of Molash in January 1871 and remained there until his retirement in 1894, when he moved, initially to 13 Wellesley Villas, Ashford, and later to The Priory, Sackville Crescent, Godinton Road, Ashford.

Molash was a poor parish – the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography quotes a letter in which he described himself as “choir-master, clerk, sexton, pastor, parish church-warden and sole paymaster”, although the ODNB also records that “he devoted most of his time to literary work at home and to research in the British Museum”.² He became an energetic supporter of the Ballad Society, and was responsible for editing and preparing for publication several volumes of ballads, including the final six volumes of the Society’s edition of the 17^th century Roxburghe Ballads.

Ebsworth died on 7^th June 1908, and was buried in Ashford cemetery on 11^th June.

The Kentish Garland

In his book Victorian Songhunters E. David Gregory characterised the publication thus:

The Kentish Garland looked back to the vogue for regional collections started by James Halliwell and continued by Davison Ingledew, John Harland, Llewellynn Jewitt, and Thomas Allan. The approach was essentially antiquarian, and there was no material collected directly from oral tradition. The Kentish Garland came in two large volumes, published in 1881-1882, edited by Julia H. L. de Vaynes, a close friend of Joseph W. Ebsworth, who contributed the illustrations and some of the notes. In compiling the books de Vaynes drew on Ebsworth’s personal collection of ballads and poems relating to Kent, and she had no lack of suitable material. This superfluity allowed her to be selective, and one of her editorial decisions was to omit “all coarse ballads.” Recognizing that “the days and modes of speech of our old song-writers were different from our own” and that “words which fall unheeded on the ears of one age jar unpleasantly in the next,” she also felt constrained in a few instances to censor her remaining material, opting to “sacrifice a few lines” or to replace “offensive phrases” by invented substitutes in square brackets. As a result, The Kentish Garland failed to give a comprehensive picture of the popular culture of the county, and the number of vernacular songs included in the publication was surprisingly small despite de Vaynes’s extensive use of broadsides as primary sources.³

In other words, the material in The Kentish Garland was about Kent, not necessarily from Kent. The collection included some content which was entirely literary in nature, and there were relatively few songs which were sung by ordinary people in Kent – at least, not in the 1880s. Having said that, there were some, such as ‘The Rambling Sailor’, which were taken from broadside ballad sheets, but which have been collected from oral tradition, and which one would definitely class as “vernacular song” or “folk song”.

The two volumes were well received at the time. For instance the Whitstable Times and Herne Bay Herald, 21^st May 1881, posted the following notice:

“THE KENTISH GARLAND.”-A handsomely-bound volume of ballads relating to the county of Kent has just been issued under this title, the work having been edited by Miss Julia H. L. De Vaynes, of Margate. This collection of Kentish ballads is the only one ever issued, and thus it will, in all probability, become exceedingly popular. Miss De Vaynes has put together, in admirably arranged order, a series of songs and ballads dating several centuries back, which are accompanied by interesting notes by Mr. J. W. Ebsworth, M.A., F.S.A., who has written an appropriate prelude entitled “The Men of Kent.”

The ballads and other pieces have been taken from the British Museum and Oxfordshire collections and other printed and manuscript sources; they relate to all parts of Kent, and comprise a great many election ditties, and songs on the Kentish Volunteers, bowmen, hopmen, cricketers, &c. Some of the pieces are exceedingly quaint, and those on election matters will be perused with peculiar interest. Two of these, which conclude the “Election group,” refer to the stormy period of the Catholic Emancipation Act; the first, ” Blue Banners with a green border,” appeared in the Times of October 21, 1828, and, we are told, was sung at the Star Inn, Maidstone, during an Anti-Brunswick Dinner, the Earl of Darnley in the chair, supported by Lord Sondes, etc.” We quote the refrain :

“March, march, Brydges and Winchelsea
Why don’t ye Brunswickers march in good order ?
March, march, Wells ‘of the bloody knee!’
All the blue banners have got a green border!”

There is a sonnet by Wordsworth (1803), and among the authors of other poems are Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dibdin, the elder, Jolin Oxenford, Walter Thornbury, W. C. Bennett, and Mr. Ebsworth. Miss De Vaynes states in her preface that The Kentish Garland is “not long to be left unaccompanied; ” and while congratulating her upon this first collection, we can assure her that another volume of these old Kentish songs and ballads will be cordially welcomed. We ought to say that the work has been well printed by Messrs. Stephen Austin and Sons, of Hertford, and admirably bound by Mr. H. J. Goulden, of Canterbury.

The two volumes were put out by a Hertford publisher, hence the extensive coverage in the Hertford Mercury and Reformer. The issue for 15^th July 1882 quoted at length from an article on ballad illustrations which had appeared in The Bibliographer, “a Journal of Book-lore”:

Miss Julia de Vaynes has collected into two handsome volumes the most interesting and representative ballads connected with the county of Kent, and in her labour of love she has been greatly assisted by Mr. Ebsworth, one of our greatest ballad authorities. Mr. Ebsworth has not been content to throw out the stores of his erudition in notes; but he has contributed a series of woodcuts, which are copied from the original ballads and are greatly improved by the process of transfer. The history of ballad illustrations has still to be written, and we hope that some day Mr. Ebsworth will write such a history. Woodcuts that had become too old and worn for the books they were made for were handed over to the ballad printer, who used them with very little regard to their Illustration of the ballads to which he joined them. Sometimes the block was too big for the purpose required, and it was at once ruthlessly cut in in half; not only that, but the same woodcuts were used over and over again, and the accepted lover of one ballad did duty as the indignant father of another. Mr. Ebsworth has retained the quaintness, but he has thrown a spirit over the whole that undoubtedly will not be found in the original.

We have a representation of two ballad singers at Sevenoaks fair in olden time. A few names of ballad-singers have come down to us, and some stories which tell of their earnings. Henry Chettle, in his Kind Hart’s Dream 1592), mentions the sons of one Barnes who boasted they could earn twenty shillings a day by singing ballads at Bishop’s Stortford and places in the neighbourhood. ‘Out roaring Dick’ earned ten shillings a day by singing at Braintree fair. A gipsy named Alice Boyce, who came to London in Elizabeth’s reign, paid the expenses of her journey up to London by singing the whole way. She had the honour of singing ‘O the Broom’ and ‘Lady Green Sleeves” before the Queen. The ballad writers were mostly on the side of the king at the period of the Civil War; and in 1648 Captain Betham was appointed Provost Marshal with power to seize upon ballad-singers. After the Restoration, at a time when the Court was out of popular favour, it was discovered that ballad-singers had too much liberty; and as late as 1763 we learn that two women were sent to Bridewell for singing political ballads before Lord Bute’s door in South Audley Street. Dorothy Fuzz was a famous ballad singer at Sevenoaks fair, but we suppose she lived at a later date than the man and woman shown in our illustration. This Kentish Garland does great credit to the taste and research of Miss De Vaynes, who has brought together much interesting matter connected with the ever-memorable county of Kent. Mr. Ebsworth has added two full indexes—one of first lines, burdens and tunes, the other of authors, titles, subjects, etc. At the head of this second index is a woodcut of the female drummer, which we are told may be taken to symbolize the fair editor, with J. W. playing second fiddle or fife and subscribers following. Prefixed to the list of subscribers is a pretty little vignette in which we see a board with this inscription, ‘Notice—no begging allowed here.’ Lower down we that the issue is strictly limited to one hundred and fifty copies, and that a few remain unsubscribed for. We expect that these copies will not remain much longer.

The same newspaper, on 2nd September 1882, contained an even longer article, reproduced from The Times, of which this is but an extract:

Nearer to the heart than the love of country lies the love of county, and there are people with whom it becomes an absorbing and engrossing passion. No one goes so heartily about a grand piece oi literary life work as your fervid county historian, who has money and leisure and pronounced archaeological tastes; who is learned in mediaeval architecture, and curious in legends and pedigrees. Kent, with its Hasteds and Lambardes and their humbler followers, is especially rich in county histories which have treated its manifold attractions—historical, picturesque, domestic, and romantic—with all the minuteness of scholarly detail. But the richer the harvest, the more is left for the gleaners; and Miss De Vaynes and Mr. Ebsworth have supplemented the more serious labours of their predecessors by gathering a variegated Garland of Kentish poetry. They do not profess to stand upon the excellence of the verses in their collection, and many of these are more characteristic than beautiful, as will be obvious when we say that a most miscellaneous collection is contained in a couple of portly octavo volumes, and that the harmonious measures of a Spenser or a Waller are mingled with doggerel catchpenny ballads and effusions disentombed from the poets’ corners of the county journals of former generations. The sole condition of admission consists in the more or less questionable metre being illustrative  of something in connexion with the county. Yet there can be no question that not only to Kentish men, but to archaeologist in general, the quaint medley will be of great interest. Kent has always been in many ways a representative county. To the south it is washed by the narrow waters that divide our Island from the nearest Continental ports, while on the northern side it touches the confines of the metropolis. It was the Kentish men who bore the brunt of the foreign invasions ; who boasted of dictating conditions to the Conqueror, and of bringing his fierce half-brother of Bayeux to reason ; and who, repeatedly mustering in their masses under popular leaders, marched on the Court and the capital in defence of popular rights. Kentish men went to man the fleets that lay at their moorings in the Downs, and the smuggling cutters that ran their cargoes everywhere, storing contraband in the caverns in the chalk cliffs. Kent has supplied to contemporary biography  a superabundance of martyrs, and highwaymen, while it has always been intimately associated with literary men from the days of the munificent Archbishop Lanfranc down to those of Charles Dickens. We have the humours of the Canterbury pilgrimages as celebrated by Chaucer, and the humours of Greenwich fair, as sung for coppers at street corners. There are pre-historic remains like those of Kit’s Coty House ; there are ecclesiastical piles like the Cathedral of Canterbury ; and there arc castles and balls, restored or in ruins, once associated with noble and knightly families which are nothing more nowadays, than a name and a memory. The Kentish bowmen immortalized themselves from Hastings to Agincourt; the wealth of the yeomen of the Weald, represented by Mr. Wardle, of the Manor Farm, in recent fiction, had passed into a proverb in the time of the Plantagenets ; while the fiercely contested battles of the hustings which half ruined more than one of the most ancient families exercised a greater influence on contemporary politics than those of Lancashire or the Ridings of Yorkshire. So that Miss De Vaynes’s industry easily found material for her collection ; while Mr. Ebsworth has contributed a variety of notes full of antiquarian and historical learning.

The two volumes of The Kentish Garland are available to view on the Internet Archive:

• Volume 1
• Volume 2

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1. Kentish Gazette, 14 September 1886 ↩︎
2. Ridler, Ann Margaret,  ‘Ebsworth, Joseph Woodfall (1824–1908), literary editor and artist’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,  September 23, 2004. Oxford University Press. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-32964 ↩︎
3. E. David Gregory, Victorian Songhunters: The Recovery and Editing of English Vernacular Ballads and Folk Lyrics, 1820-1883, Lanham:Scarecrow, 2006, p367 ↩︎

William George Glanfield, 1855-1935

William Glanfield was born at the School House, Sandgate on 29^th March 1855, and baptised at St Paul’s, Sandgate, on 30^th May. His father – also William – was head master at the National School in Sandgate from 1854 to 1884, and this was the school which young William attended. When he left school he was apprenticed to a Folkestone printer, and then worked for a printing company in London. On returning to Folkestone, he joined the staff of the Folkestone Chronicle, subsequently absorbed by the Folkestone Herald (there were four rival newspapers in the town at that time). His association with the Folkestone Herald began in November 1891, about six months after the birth of that newspaper. His obituary in the Folkestone, Hythe, Sandgate & Cheriton Herald, 2^nd February 1935, recorded that

In the first special article that he penned for the paper to which he was to devote his life during the next 44 years, there was a touch of romance and drama. It was a graphic account of the wreck of the “Benvenue,” a ship which was wrecked at Sandgate on November 11th, 1891, in a terrific gale. It was this story of the terrible peril of the crew of the wrecked vessel and the gallant attempts at rescue that “Felix” submitted to the then very young “Folkestone Herald.” It was accepted, and in the issue of the paper that week appeared a picture of the rescued crew. “Felix” had taken the precious negative to London and returned to Folkestone with the process block from which the first picture of the kind was printed in a local newspaper. […]

It was a memorable beginning to a great career In which his powers as a descriptive writer were so often brilliantly used.

Under the non-de-plume ‘Felix’, Glanfield was most closely associated with the “About the neighbourhood” columns which appeared in the paper. In these he wrote about local events he had attended, and about characters he had met, and the sights he had seen, on his lengthy walks around the countryside. The events sometimes included harvest homes and hunt suppers, where singing might take place, while the local characters he wrote about were sometimes identified as singers. These included Charley Appleton, James Rye, George Mount, and Tom Catt. He did not himself collect any folk songs; indeed when he reproduced the words of ‘We are all Jolly Fellows that Follow the Plough’ in his column, these had been written out and sent to him by Charley Appleton.

Glanfield himself was a singer, for 19 years a member of the choir of Holy Trinity, Folkestone, with whom he took the role of bass soloist: “He had a voice of quality, and could sing some of the best-loved of the older songs with tremendous feeling”.¹ The phrase “older songs” here almost certainly does not refer to traditional folk songs, but is probably reflective of his distaste for more modern musical styles (see the article quoted below, headed ‘The Folkestone Harbour Marine Staff’). His writings about singing events, certainly towards the end of his life, are decidedly nostalgic, but consistently applaud and promote the virtues of “community singing”. For example, writing in 1934 about the singing of ‘The Farmer’s Boy’ at an annual dinner of the Shorncliffe Drag Hunt some forty years earlier, he concludes

Singing! Rough and ready it might have been, but what a treat to hear those yeomen “go it.” ²

William Glanfield was knocked down by a motor car in November 1934 and, after having spent some time in hospital, he died at his home, 6 Russell Road, Folkestone, on 29^th January 1935, at the age of 79.

Extracts from Glanfield’s writing

HARVEST HOME AT NEWINGTON.

FARM HANDS ENJOY A SUBSTANTIAL DINNER.

A CELEBRATED BRAND OF BEEF PUDDINGS.

“THE EMPEROR OF NEWINGTON, “KING OF CHERITON,” AND “SHAH OF FOLKESTONE.”

A RATTLING GOOD EVENING.

(By Felix.).

We are just now in the thick of harvest celebrations, both religious and secular. I have no doubt that nearly all the company I had the pleasure of meeting on Wednesday evening at the “Star,” Newington, had been at least reminded of the spiritual lessons of the ingathering of the crops, and thus, in a measure, they had been prepared for the festivity, which, so far as Cheriton and Newington are concerned, marks an annual red-letter day in the lives of those who “plough the fields and scatter the good seed on the land.” This harvest home, unique in its way, is given to the men in their employ by Mr. Quested, of “The Firs,” Cheriton, and Mr. F. Graves, of “Pound Farm,” Newington. For six months in the year the past Celebration is a pleasant memory, and during the other half of the twelve months, the coming festivity provides the pleasures of anticipation. Five years have slipped past since I was enabled to accept the hospitality of the founders of this particular feast.

OPPORTUNITY, HOWEVER, OFFERED ITSELF

on this occasion. Accordingly I found myself at the celebrated hostelry referred to on the evening in question. Here I had the pleasure of meeting Alderman Banks, a number of invited guests, and about fifty sons of toil. The dining room was a picture and a reminder of the special nature of the celebration. From the ceiling were suspended huge specimens of gourds, mangold wurtzels, marrows, cow cabbage, cauliflower, turnips, etc., whilst autumnal flowers added yet another touch of colour and brightness to the scene, which was lighted by means of oil lamps and candles. When the senior Alderman of Folkestone, surrounded by several old and young friends, sank into his comfortable arm-chair, he received a right down hearty welcome from the assembled company. Dressed all in their Sunday best, each wearing a flower or wisp of corn in their coats, these workers, with their ruddy, shining faces, presented a typical picture of the English agricultural labourer. The clear air of Wednesday last will be remembered for its exhilarating qualities, and this, coupled with the healthful calling of the men, will readily account for the fact that appetites were in perfect condition. No supper at the “Star” would be complete without a supply of Mrs. Maycock’s special brand of Newington beef puddings.

THESE DELICACIES ARE FAMED THE COUNTRY ROUND,

and the farm hands swear by them. Offer these sons of toil clear or thick ox-tail soup, turbot, and shrimp sauce, or salmon and cucumber, and their faces would probably wear a look of disgust or wonderment, , but substitute beef pudding for these, and then they will understand matters, adding, perhaps, by way of comment: “Ah! That’s the tackle, There’s summut there to lay hold on.” Therefore, when the stalwart sons of Mr. Maycock entered the room, each bearing on a dish a mammoth and steaming beef pudding, knives and forks were seized almost involuntarily. Mr. “Freddy” Graves and Mr. Councillor Quested,

EACH ARMED WITH A CARVER,

proceeded to cut the light crust of the puddings, and as the water gushed out of the rock at the touch of Moses, so did the delicious gravy at the hands of the gentlemen mentioned. Thereafter the puddings (during the short time they remained) were as islands of beef and crust, surrounded by rich gravy. Mashed turnips, floury potatoes, and tender cabbage, also contributed to the first course, which a neighbouring ploughman remarked, was very well by way of foundation. Puddings are generally supposed to be satisfying. One helping is generally thought to be amply sufficient to meet the requirements of an average townsman, but with the “man on the land,” it is a mere “paving of the way.” Thus it was that when rounds of roast beef and boiled legs of mutton made their appearance, only to disappear, that somewhat Nelsonian command

was strictly obeyed : “Newington expects that every man, this night, will do his duty.” Just by way of settling these substantial courses, “Christmas” puddings were then discussed with astounding vigour. Now

EMPTY PLATES AND SATISFIED EXPRESSIONS

told their own eloquent tale. Mr. Evans, the ever genial manager of the Royal Pavilion Hotel, graced the company with his presence, and I doubt, with all his experience of banquets, and their tempting menus, if he ever gazed upon a company that did better justice to a spread than did the guests over at Newington. The Alderman having “returned thanks,” tables were cleared, “Churchwarden” pipes, “jugs of beer,” and beverages from the Emerald Isle and North of the Tweed, were now much in evidence. “Minerals” also there were in plenty for those who needed them. The Chairman, in spite of the 76 years that weigh lightly upon him, was in his best form—full of “go,” racy, and witty. In glowing Ianguage he proposed the health of “The Queen,” and in doing so he expressed his opinion that in 50 years’ time the English language would be almost universal. The toast was accorded the usual loyal honours, Mr. Percy Greenstreet presiding at the piano. Thereafter

SPEECH AND SONG ALTERNATED.

Dick Mount, a farm hand of some seventy summers, in a twenty-verse song, told the story of a bashful swain and an innocent country lass, whilst another follower of the plough related in a ditty the doings of a certain little tailor of Dover³, much to the amusement of the company. Other successful vocal efforts were also duly enjoyed, and notable amongst these were the contributions of the ill-used Folkestone minstrels. A few toasts were proposed. One ancient countryman, in lieu of a song, was heard to express himself to the following effect :-

“Here’s to mountains of beef
And rivers of beer,
A good-temper’d wife,
And a thousand a year.”

Perhaps the first three he has realised, but whether the thousand will ever come to him time alone will prove. Let us hope so, but perhaps, after all, he is just as happy without it.

ALDERMAN BANKS,

in a humorous speech, proposed “The Founders of the feast,” Messrs. Quested and Graves. The former gentleman is generally known as Chairman of the Cheriton Urban District Council, but the Alderman has conferred upon him the title of the King of Cheriton, whilst the owner of Pound Farm is henceforward to be known as the “Emperor of Newington.” Thus the senior Alderman orders it. The Chairman then proceeded to give a learned dissertation on matters generally appertaining to agriculture, and, in the course of his remarks, proceeded to tell the labourers that they were better off than their masters, that was, “If they could only see it.” He had known both Mr. Quested and Mr. Graves for several years, and from what he knew of them both, he had no hesitation in describing them as “jolly good fellows.” The company, now warming up to the occasion, appeared to agree with this latter opinion, for the men burst out in loud applause.  The “The Emperor of Newington” replied and acknowledged, in grateful terms,

THE GAME OLD ALDERMAN’S

remarks, expressing a hope they would be able to welcome him on many similar occasions. “The King of Cheriton,” not to be outdone in courtesy, expressed the pleasure it gave him to listen to Alderman Banks’ remarks, and before sitting down he felt he was only interpreting the wishes of all when he conferred upon the Alderman a fresh title. A few days since, at a meeting at the Town Hall, Sir Ed. Sassoon had described the chairman as The “Grand Old Man of Folkestone,” but he (Mr. Quested) would go a step further in exchange for the honours accorded both himself and his colleague by conferring upon the Alderman the title of “The Shah of Folkestone.” Amidst loud laughter the speaker concluded by proposing the Chairman’s health. “The Shah,” in acknowledging the honour, said although he did not possess so many wives as the eastern potentate, he was very well satisfied with one. He could assure them all he was proud of his new title, and would do his best to be worthv of his exalted position. The speaker concluded a characteristic racy speech by declaring that although at his advanced age he could not expect to be present at many more such gatherings, yet he hoped they would meet for many years in a similar manner, for it was well that men and masters should gather round the festive board. The hour’s extension (11 o’clock) having been reached, the company separated, the farm hands to dream of beef pudding; the royalty” and other guests of a more pleasant diversion from the ordinary trammels of daily existence. ⁴

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The Folkestone Harbour Marine Staff.

On Saturday night I found myself in the company of as jolly a lot of young fellows as could wish to meet. They were the rank and file of those that do duty in handling the goods traffic when, as a rule, Folkestone is sleeping. They celebrated their existence on Saturday evening by enjoying what might be described as a “cut and come again” kind of repast. There were no printed menus, but there was a choice of roast or boiled (the latter with trimming,). There were no “hedgers.” Every man did his duty in this respect, and after their hearty repast they could adopt the lines of the song

“I feel content with all mankind,
For life’s a sea of pleasure.”

But although this kind of sentiment may be of a transient nature, yet it is wonderful how these little functions draw people together. In the long run it all tends to friendship and comradeship. On this occasion there was a flow of songs, not of the American jazz order, but those good old British ditties, that stand the test of time—”the songs my mother used to sing.” Time after time have I attended pleasant little functions where songs have a place, but invariably I have heard people express themselves after a fill of jazz. “Ah! After all, there is nothing like the old songs.” This gathering I was at on Saturday night was at the Harvey Hotel, where it was my lot a year or so ago to sit out an after-dinner programme. In the afternoon I had listened at the Pleasure Gardens to that great artiste, Mr. John Coates, who rendered in his incomparable style some of those now little known old English songs of periods long ago. It was a delightful experience. In the evening I had to hear the following twentieth century composition set to “jazz ” music:-

“I love doughnuts with jam in the
Jam in the middle, jam in the middle.'”

The contrast was great, and the more so owing to the rendering of another ditty termed, “They think I’m not all there.” But on Saturday last we had the “good old timers” including “Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep,”  “The Farmer’s Boy,” “The Village Blacksmith,” and others of that ilk. As a sturdy harbour porter remarked to me: ” Say, Felix, there is ‘something to eat’ in those kind of songs.” Yes, that event at the Harvey Hotel reminded me of the good old sing-songs and “friendly leads” of years ago. I would like to see more of them. I firmly believe there will be a revival in this respect. ⁶

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Further extracts from “About the neighbourhood” columns by ‘Felix’ can be found in the articles on Charley Appleton, James Rye, George Mount, and Tom Catt.

1. Folkestone, Hythe, Sandgate & Cheriton Herald, 02 February 1935 ↩︎
2. Folkestone, Hythe, Sandgate & Cheriton Herald, 03 March 1934 ↩︎
3. This song was most probably Roud 570, known under various titles including ‘The Bold Boatswain of Dover’ and  ‘The Boatsman and the tailor’. Francis Collinson noted down a 2 verse version in Pembury in 1952 – see ‘There was a jolly boatman’. ↩︎
4. Folkestone, Hythe, Sandgate & Cheriton Herald, 06 October 1900 ↩︎
5. Folkestone, Hythe, Sandgate & Cheriton Herald, 19th February 1927 ↩︎
6. Folkestone, Hythe, Sandgate & Cheriton Herald, 28th January 1928 ↩︎