Mary Ann Haynes, née Millis, 1905–1977
Given that she was born in Portsmouth and spent much of her life in Brighton, it would be extremely bold to claim Mary Ann Haynes as a Kentish singer. However she came to Kent regularly for seasonal agricultural work, and deserves a mention on this website as singer of a particularly fine version of the song ‘Hopping down in Kent’.
Mike Yates recorded three dozen songs from Mary Ann Haynes in the 1970s. In the notes for the Musical Traditions CD Here’s Luck to a Man… he wrote:
One of the first Gypsy singers that I met was Mary Ann Haynes. I had been told that her son, Ted, was a singer and I drove down to Sussex one Sunday afternoon, looking for his trailer. Eventually, I found Ted and his trailer in a field. He was busy and directed me to his mother, who ‘knew all the old songs’. Mary lived in High Street, Brighton, where, according to Ted, she was known to ‘everybody’. High Street turned out to be a narrow street off the sea-front and was full of large tower blocks. I started knocking on doors, only to be told that nobody knew a Mrs Haynes. I found that when I mentioned that she was a Gypsy doors were closed very quickly in my face. I began to wonder if I would ever find Mary, and was about to give up, when a lady said that there were no Gypsies in the area, only ‘an Italian looking lady’. This was, of course, Mary. When I arrived she was sleeping off a lunchtime session in the pub, but, once roused, she set about making a cup of tea and, having said that I knew her son (sort of), she began to sing as soon as I mentioned songs. Mary had been born in 1905, in a Faversham waggon parked behind The Coach and Horses in Portsmouth, Hampshire. Her father, Richard Milest, was a horse-dealer whose family would accompany him across England during the summer as he made his way from fair to fair. “We used to go to the Vinegar & Pepper Fair at Bristol, then to Chichester, Lewes, Canterbury and Oxford, then up to Appleby and back down to Yalding.” Mary’s husband died suddenly, leaving her with a large family, and, having settled in Brighton, she worked as a flower-seller, earning enough to support her family. 1
I was unable to find any trace in official records of her father under the name Richard Milest (or Millest, which seems to be the more usual spelling of the surname). However evidence suggests that the family’s name was in fact Millis, and he was probably the Richard Millis whose birth was recorded in the Battle district of Sussex in 1863, and who, at the time of the 1881 census, was residing at 25 St Mary Magdalene Street in Brighton. 19 years old at the time, Richard was working as a Bricklayer’s labourer. His father Henry was listed as a Horsedealer.
Janet Keet-Black, co-founder of the Romany and Traveller Family History Society, confirms that Mary Ann’s maiden name was Millis in a 2025 interview with Will Duke:
Janet: Brighton used to get a lot of Travellers stopping, for short term, short times, around, up on the downland around Brighton, and they, some of them, would become settled, but still retain their ‘Gypsyness’, if you like. And one of those families were the Millis family. They had wagons, in the 1900s, worked with horses, hawked, whatever, did farm work. And you could find them at Falmer, up on the Downs at Woodingdean, all over. They’re still very much in Brighton, the Millis family.
Will: Millis, M I …
Janet: It’s M, I, double L, I, S: Millis, or it also became Mellish, M, E, double L, I, S, H, same family, Millises, Mellishes. One of the most famous Millises was Mary Anne Haynes.
Will: Right. Okay, yeah.
Janet: Her dad was a Millis.
Will: She was a great singer, when she wasn’t working, yes …
Janet: … when she wasn’t working. She was born down in Southampton, I think … Portsmouth, behind a pub in Portsmouth, but she died in Brighton. She became a flower seller. Yeah, her dad was a Millis, Mellish. I think he turned out, I think he ended up as a Mellish.
Will: And she married a Haynes.
Janet: She married somebody called Ted Haynes, who was a basket maker. But the interesting thing with Mary Anne is that, I think it was her grandmother who was a Willet, Elizabeth Willet …
Will: tell us more …
Janet: which made Mary Ann Haynes’s father, first cousin to Tom Willet, which sort of makes sense, if you think about it … 2
Mary Ann married Ted Haynes, also from Brighton, in the second quarter of 1922, and their first child; also Edward, was born in February 1925. At the time of the 1939 Register, taken in September of that year, it is no surprise that she was to be found in Kent, hop-picking. Specifically, she was at “Spelmonden Farm, Hazel Street” – this was probably Hazel Street Farm, Spelmonden Road, Horsmonden. Her occupation was given as “Hawker. Gen Dealer”, and her date of birth as 9th April 1904 (when her death was recorded in 1977, her birthday was also shown as 9th April, but the year as 1905). With her in the hop-pickers’ huts were her fourteen-year old son Edward (Ted), and four other children: Alice Mary, Kathleen, Elizabeth (Betty) and one-year-old John.
The birth records for Alice (registered in the Reigate district, 1931), and her sister Elizabeth (registered in Brighton, 1936), both give the mother’s maiden name as Millis. It was presumably Alice who accompanied her mother to prison in October 1932, as reported widely in newspapers including the Daily News and Daily Mirror. The Belfast Telegraph for Saturday, 22nd October 1932 reported as follows:
BABY TO GO TO PRISON.
MOTHER’S BEQUEST GRANTED.
When Mrs. Mary Ann Haynes, a 26-year-old gipsy woman, was sentenced to a month’s hard labour at Brighton Police Court yesterday for being drunk in charge of a horse and cart and obstructing a policeman, she exclaimed: “Please let my baby go with me.”
The magistrates, after conferring together, agreed, and Mrs. Haynes, smiling happily, said: “Oh, thank you very much”.
A later court report gives Mary Ann’s address as 37 Edward Street, Brighton:
HURSTPIERPOINT
For depositing rubbish in the Brighton-rd. a short distance from Muddleswood cross-roads on February 7, Mrs. Mary Ann Haynes, of 37, Edward-s. Brighton, was fined 10s. at Haywards Heath Magistrates’ Court.3
Edward Street is literally just around the corner from High Street, Brighton, where Mike Yates would find her in the 1970s.
David Stacey, who in between archaeological digs spent a good deal of time apple-picking and hop-picking in Kent in the 1960s and 1970s, met Mary Ann’s son Ted Haynes – himself a singer – in The White Hart at Claygate.
Towards the end of the season Ted, after a particularly good session, said “You like the old songs, boy, don’t yer – you ought to meet my mother, she’s a bit of a rough’un but she can sing” and he handed me his card.
Although my girl partner of the time and I were due to move to warmer climes before the winter set in I persuaded her that we should make the effort to find, and if possible, to record Ted’s mother, as I would like to learn some of the songs I felt sure she knew. We had little money to spare on such a venture and no recording equipment of any sort but we set off across southern Britain, finishing up in Brighton where Ted’s mother, Mary, lived.
Travellers, justifiably, keep themselves to themselves and, although I had Ted’s invitation to meet his mother, there were many delays before I was given the name of a pub where I would find Mary and other members of her family. Meanwhile there were two mouths to feed and the chills of winter were setting in. Approaches to the folk clubs of Brighton for any sort of assistance were generally greeted with scorn although students who ran a club at the University of Sussex did find us an empty room in a dorm and another club allowed us to hold a raffle. By then, if we had delayed our departure any longer we would have been too broke to travel. We had to leave, but the meeting with Mary Haynes had confirmed that she had a wealth of songs. I knew she should be recorded and searched desperately for somebody who could get her repertoire on tape. Eventually I gave her contact details to Dave Bland, at that time doing some field recordings for Bill Leader. In the end David passed her details on to Mike Yates who eventually did record Mary and went on to describe her as “one of the most outstanding folksinging discoveries to be made in recent years” (Green Grow the Laurels Topic 12TS285).4
Mary Ann Haynes died on the 10th November 1977, and was buried in Brighton and Preston Cemetery.5
Songs
- Hopping Down In Kent
- My Lovely Hops
For a full list of songs collected from Mary Ann Haynes, search the Roud Index.
Discography
Recordings of Mary Ann Haynes appear on the following albums:
Songs of the Open Road: Gypsies, Travellers & Country Singers, Topic Records 12T253 (LP, 1975), TSDL253 (digital download, 2009)
https://www.topicrecords.co.uk/2010/12/various-artists-songs-of-the-open-road-tsdl253/
Travellers: Songs, Stories and Tunes from English Gypsies, Topic Records 12TS395 (LP, 1985), TSDL395 (digital download, 2015)
https://www.topicrecords.co.uk/2015/05/travellers-songs-stories-and-tunes-from-english-gypsies-tsdl395/
Voice of The People Vol. 1: Come Let Us Buy the Licence, Topic Records TSCD651 (CD, 1998)
https://www.topicrecords.co.uk/2010/09/come-let-us-buy-the-license-songs-of-courtship-marriage-tscd651/
Voice of The People Vol. 4: Farewell My Own Dear Native Land, Topic Records TSCD654 (CD, 1998)
https://www.topicrecords.co.uk/2010/09/farewell-my-own-dear-native-land-songs-of-exile-emigration-tscd654/
Voice of The People Vol. 6: Tonight I’ll Make You my Bride, Topic Records TSCD656 (CD, 1998)
https://www.topicrecords.co.uk/2010/09/tonight-ill-make-you-my-bride-ballads-of-true-false-lovers-tscd656/
Voice of The People Vol. 11: My Father’s the King of the Gypsies, Topic Records TSCD661 (CD, 1998)
https://www.topicrecords.co.uk/2010/09/my-fathers-the-king-of-the-gypsies-music-of-english-welsh-travellers-gypsies-tscd661/
Voice of The People Vol. 20: There is a Man upon the Farm, Topic Records TSCD670 (CD, 1998)
https://www.topicrecords.co.uk/2010/09/there-is-a-man-upon-the-farm-working-men-women-in-song/
Many thanks to Mike Yates for permission to reproduce the photographs on this page.
- Mike Yates, booklet notes for Here’s Luck to a Man… An Anthology of Gypsy Songs & Music
from South-East England, Musical Traditions, MTCD320, 2003, https://mustrad.co.uk/articles/luck.htm#sing ↩︎ - Janet Keet-Black talking with Will Duke, 14 Sep 2025, Sussex Traditions, https://sussextraditions.org/sussex-topics-2/song-music-dance/folk-dance/janet-keet-black-in-conversation-with-will-duke/ ↩︎
- West Sussex Gazette, 8 March 1956 ↩︎
- David Stacey, A Gorgio amongst Travellers, Musical Traditions Enthusiasms No 39, 2003, https://mustrad.co.uk/enth39.htm ↩︎
- England Billion Graves Cemetery Index, https://billiongraves.com/grave/Mary-Ann-Haynes/17336635 ↩︎
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