BLACKMORE HISTORY NEWS - August 2010

Welcome to this month’s round-up of local history and heritage in and around Blackmore, Essex.

A Folk Song A Day

Jon Boden’s website is a musical journey into our past. Since Midsummer Day a new song has been posted every day. Highlights include:
A Blacksmith Courted Me - http://www.afolksongaday.com/2010/07/27/a-blacksmith-courted-me/; Danny Deever - http://www.afolksongaday.com/2010/07/11/danny-deever/ ; and, Tyne of Harrow - http://www.afolksongaday.com/2010/07/01/tyne-of-harrow/ - all of which I have added a comment. For more about the project read the article which appeared in The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/jul/28/jon-boden-a-folk-song-a-day

Henry Moore

‘Harlow Family Group’ is a well-known sculpture in the New Town by Henry Moore. At the Gibberd Gallery in the Civic Centre (Harlow, Essex) an exhibition of the artist’s work has commenced and will continue until 30 October 2010. (Admission Free. Open Monday to Friday 9.00am to 5.00pm, Saturday 9.00am to noon. Closed Sundays and Bank Holidays). Having recently visited the major exhibition at Tate Britain in London (which closes 8 August) and visited Moore’s home, grounds and studio at Perry Green in Hertfordshire, this local exhibition, entitled ‘Sheep’, is not to be missed.

Henry Moore is probably Britain’s greatest twentieth century sculptor. He is best known for his large scale human forms, sometimes with distorted torsos, wrong sized and shaped heads and limbs. His ability to form body shapes is said to be based on his memories of rubbing his infirm mother’s shoulders and back as a child. At the Tate Britain exhibition it was suggested that his work was dark and sensual but in my view it omitted the fact that he began studying sculpture at Leeds – he was the only student – following service in the First World War at Cambrai. The pitiful sight of dismembered bodies on the battlefield must have had a lasting influence on his work. If was after his London studio was bombed in The Blitz of the Second World War that he came to Hoglands, at Perry Green, where he remained until the close of his life. Anyway, I know little about modern art but find it interesting and, unlike a Constable masterpiece such as ‘The Haywain’, something which always engenders discussion among viewers.

Edward Henry Lisle Reeve

Readers of this site will know that I am very interested in the life and times of Revd. Reeve (photograph above) who was Rector of Stondon Massey from 1893 to 1935. I have decided to write a biography of this man but wonder whether any of his descendents survive – hence this appeal. He and his sisters died unmarried but we know of a Wheatley family who was related to him through the previous marriage of his mother.

Issac Taylor of Stanford Rivers

Pages from the ‘Dictionary of National Biography’ (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Dictionary_of_National_Biography_volume_55.djvu/423 , http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Dictionary_of_National_Biography_volume_55.djvu/424 and http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Dictionary_of_National_Biography_volume_55.djvu/425 ) give a biography of Issac Taylor, an artist, author and inventor who was born in Lavenham, Suffolk in 1787 – remembered in the Lavenham Guildhall owned by the National Trust - and died at Stanford Rivers in 1865. “A portrait of Isaac Taylor of Stanford Rivers is the property of Henry Taylor of Tunbridge Wells, and a crayon portrait by his nephew, Josiah Gilbert, is in the National Portrait Gallery.”

Family History

Samuel Wilson, born 1801, Writtle: http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=bkev8tjhpa3e8kjd8ssh3009u2&topic=23988.0

New Photos

Fryerning Church font: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stiffleaf/4739185699/
Mountnessing Windmill: http://www.flickr.com/photos/43012441@N07/4798961727/

Links

For an extensive list of links to other sites go to: http://www.blackmorehistory.co.uk/externallinks.html

A Folk Song A Day

This might seem off the beaten track for local history but I want to give a plug for a newly released website (http://www.afolksongaday.com/) in which BBC Folk Singer of the Year 2010 Jon Boden is releasing an unaccompanied folk song on a daily basis, beginning on Midsummers Day, 24 June (i.e. last Thursday). I will let the website sing for itself if you follow the link. Inevitably some of the 365 songs will be relevant to this area of Essex as a result of the work Ralph Vaughan Williams did in the first decade of the twentieth century visiting homes, workhouses and public houses to note songs for posterity.

The greatest exponents of these songs locally must be Potiphars Apprentices (http://potiphar.org.uk/) who hold concerts telling of the lives, times and music associated with one Britain's greatest classical music composers. Their recent concert at Ingatestone Hall for Friends of Historic Essex (the support group of the Essex Record Office) was very popular and well received.

Blackmore: Folk Music and Dance

Blackmore Morris Men celebrate their fortieth anniversary today. The side was formed on 14 January 1970, according to their website (http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/blackmoremorris/).

On New Years Day at lunchtime a large crowd turned up at the Leather Bottle, Blackmore, to watch the annual dance to celebrate the change of the year. Bells, handkerchiefs and sticks and Cotswold Morris tunes abound: ‘Speed the Plough’ and ‘Queen’s Delight’ being two now recognisable to me. Afterwards the group went into the pub for an impromptu and informal play and sing. Sitting in the middle of the room I was treated to a surround sound rendition as one by one other musicians and singers joined in.

Over the years I have seen Morris Dancing at local country pubs but it is only relatively recently that I have become a real listener to folk music. There is something strange about folk music in the sense that it is as if I have always known this music and it is not new to my ears. Perhaps the music says something about my roots. I have given much thought as to why that might be and why I think that way about this musical genre. I have four possible theories.

Firstly, when I was in the Junior School Choir we sang ‘Streets of London’, made famous by Ralph McTell. Then at Christmas 1975 Steeleye Span released a hugely popular single entitled ‘All Around My Hat’ which, although I did not get round to buying it at Martin’s Record Shop in (Market Place,) Ingatestone, I enjoyed very much. I recently learned that the chorus is a collected nineteenth century folk song. The 1970s was a time of a revival in folk music, not that I had any inkling of this at the time. As a family we bought the hit single ‘Portsmouth’ by Mike Oldfield. Lo and behold this was a tune played at the session at the Leather Bottle on New Years Day this year.

Secondly, I grew up in a Church of England school where hymns were part of the tradition. Some of the hymn tunes I now know to be arrangements of folk tunes.

Thirdly, I have been a lover of classical music for many years, particularly of Ralph Vaughan Williams who I discovered was a great folk song collector in Essex and elsewhere. His Symphony No 5, one of my favourite pieces, seems to have a folk song strand running through it.

Finally, one reason why I might know these tunes is perhaps because the chorus or refrains from songs are repeatable and fairly easily picked up. When I went to a concert by Bellowhead a couple of years ago, John Boden, the lead singer told the audience that “we are looking for volume rather than quality”.

I have checked with my family to see whether the folk tradition has somehow been handed down to me without knowing it. Apparently this is not the case.

I am not a performer so the notion of joining in Morris Dancing, other than the fun final dance with audience participation, or singing a solo is definitely something I shy away from. But I am more than happy to join in with an enthusiastic audience. So congratulations to the artistes who make up Blackmore Morris and thanks for keeping tradition alive.

BLACKMORE HISTORY NEWS - July 2009

Welcome to this month’s round-up of local history and heritage in and around Blackmore, Essex.

High Country History Group

Blackmore Area Local History is pleased to promote the High Country History Group by launching a mini site devoted to the four small parishes of Greensted, Stanford Rivers, Stapleford Tawney and Theydon Mount to the west of Ongar, Essex. As with the main site, which launched pages covering ten neighbouring parishes to Blackmore in March this year, the site is set up to enable it to grow as more information and pictures are added. The Group, which publishes a Journal every quarter meets five times a year at Toot Hill Village Hall. The Winter Programme for 2009/10 will be announced soon. To see the new mini site go to: http://www.blackmorehistory.co.uk/hchg.html

Church Website Makeover

The Priory Church of St Laurence, Blackmore with St Peter & St Paul, Stondon Massey, has had a website for a few years but it is now undergoing a major update ahead of the formal search for a new Vicar / Rector for the parishes. The site includes a Gallery of pictures which may be of interest to our readers. A picture of the interior of Stondon Massey Church is shown above. Take a look: http://www.stlaurenceblackmore.co.uk/

Bariff’s Farm Mystery

Last month I mentioned Heather Tomkins’ enquiry about the location of Bariff's Farm, supposedly in Mountnessing. From further information received from Heather, stating that the farm was near Gooseberry Green and Mountnessing Grange, I suggested that the farm was, in fact in Billericay. Further conversations have established that Mountnessing parish stretched as far as Gooseberry Green, covering Little Cowbridge Farm, and Great Cowbridge Farm, the other side of the Shenfield to Southend railway line, certainly as late as 1912. Does anyone out there have any further information?

Essex Radio

Sorry to be nostalgic, but ‘Essex FM’ passed into radio history on 22 June. Its previous station name, ‘Essex Radio’ began broadcasting in 1981. Apart from local programmes at breakfast time and ‘drivetime’, all the output from the new sounding radio station, Heart, is being broadcast from London.

‘Longpier’ refers to the demise of Essex FM: “Of course the decision to rebrand is an effort to save money, and boost advertising revenue using a well known brand [Heart]. It'll probably work, but for those who really like their radio to be local, well I'm afraid you've just attended the funeral and buried the dead. RIP Essex FM.” See http://www.longpier.com/

For more on Essex Radio and Essex FM visit: http://www.petesipple.co.uk/essexradio.html and, for sound extracts, http://www.radioandtelly.co.uk/essexradioaudio.html

Charles Potiphar centenary

Ralph Vaughan Williams’ visit to Ingrave in 1903 is remembered this year with the death of Charles Potiphar, the labourer from Ingrave, who sang to the composer folk songs. On the internet I found a potted family tree for this man but wonder whether the descendents know of his fame and contribution to English music of the twentieth century. When I visited the site on 21 June, the date of his death (21.6.1909) was missing. http://www.piers-potiphar.co.uk/page140.html

The Essex Record Office has reference to Charles Potipher (or Potiphar) under the following reference: http://seax.essexcc.gov.uk//ViewCatalogue.asp?ID=182599

The Ralph Vaughan Williams Society has reference to a book specifically on the composer’s time in Essex: http://www.rvwsociety.com/albionbooks.html

Revd. Nathaniel Ward of Stondon Massey

‘A memoir of the Rev. Nathaniel Ward, A.M.’ by John Ward Dean has appeared on Google Books. For more, follow this link: http://books.google.com/books?id=0DEFAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA29&lpg=PA29&dq=stondon+massey&source=bl&ots=XTW00eDHrh&sig=OgfPHkOHDoPIiyQ7My_KWfheS0Q&hl=en

Classic Ingatestone Publication on Google Books

‘Ingatestone and the Great Essex Road with Fryerning’ by E E Wilde, dated 1913, is available to view on the Internet: http://books.google.com/books?id=NufA8a0ubeMC&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq=fryerning&source=bl&ots=fvvjw804-N&sig=1rq8qzwyF0DOFT_32CcPN_xaU_s&hl=en

High Ongar War Memorial

‘Harlowirish’ has posted the following entry on ‘Flicker’. Go to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/harlowirish/2650362307/

RAF 46 Squadron

Those interested in the heroic deeds of airmen of Essex during the First World War and Second World War may be interested to read the potted history of No 46 Squadron RAF: http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/No._46_Squadron_RAF

Shellow Bowells

On the list: http://spyfoo.com/Term.aspx?t=1385491

Flicker Pictures

St John’s Green, Writtle: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuart166axe/3587421166/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuart166axe/3587425982/

Links

For an extensive list of links to other sites go to: www.blackmorehistory.co.uk/externallinks.html

Ingrave: Remembering Charles Potiphar

Charles Potipher (or Potiphar), an Ingrave labourer, died today (21st June) in 1909. He is remembered specifically for being the first person from whom Ralph Vaughan Williams collected – i.e. noted down – his first of a collection of folk songs.

Potiphar was born in South Weald, married in Ingatestone and later moved to Ingrave. He was a local man. He is buried in an unmarked grave in Ingrave churchyard.

The visit by Ralph Vaughan Williams to a humble labourer’s cottage on 4th December 1903 ignited the composer’s passion for folk song. He came on a 10-day cycling tour of Ingrave, Willingale, Little Burstead, East Horndon and Billericay the following year to collect further examples – over 100 from Essex - and visited many places in southern England and East Anglia in order to “give them back to the world”.

Last night ‘Potiphar’s Apprentices’, a trio of local folk musicians (John and Sue Cubbin and Adrian May) brought back to Ingrave Church Hall the story and songs collected from Charles Potipher and others. Sue Cubbin, who used to work at the Essex Record Office, mounted an exhibition in Chelmsford dedicated to Vaughan Williams’ visits to Essex (2003) and wrote the book of the exhibition entitled ‘A Precious Legacy’ (2006). The audience in the Church Hall heard a number of songs including:
- ‘Poacher’s Song’
- ‘I’m A Stranger’, collected from Mrs Humphries whose father and grand-father lived in Blackmore
- ‘Bold Turpin’, an 18th century ballad commemorating the deeds of the Essex highwayman, Dick Turpin
- ‘Lay Still My Fond Shepherd’, which otherwise is known as ‘Lark In The Morning’
- ‘In Jessie’s City’, the sad ballad of a maid who became pregnant by a postman boy – the tune of which later was used as the setting of the hymn ‘It is a thing most wonderful’ (Herongate) when Vaughan Williams edited the English Hymnal (1906)
- ‘The Sheffield Apprentice’, used again in the English Hymnal for the setting of the tune of ‘There’s a friend for little children’ (Ingrave)
- ‘Bushes and Briars’, the first song collected from Vaughan Williams at Potiphar’s home.

For more information on ‘Potiphar’s Apprentices’ Visit: http://potiphar.org.uk/


Bibliography

The English Hymnal (1906)
Cubbins, Sue. That Precious Legacy. Ralph Vaughan Williams and Essex Folksong (Essex Record Office, 2006)

Other sources

Previous essay written for Blackmore Area Local History (2.8.08): http://blackmorehistory.blogspot.com/2008/08/vaughan-williams-and-essex.html

Vaughan Williams and Essex

Fifty years ago, on 26th August 1958, the famous British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams died. Whilst he never lived in Essex we can claim that this locality had a major influence on his musical output.

Vaughan Williams was born in 1872 in Down Ampney, Gloucestershire. He studied at the Royal College of Music at a time when English music was popular in “the organ loft and the festival platform rather than the stage” [Day, p8]. His tutor Charles Stanford had failed at opera whilst Arthur Sullivan was succeeding at operetta, but then this was not considered serious music.

Looking for a musical style, Vaughan Williams became interested in folk song. The Folk Song Society had been formed in 1898 but was struggling despite Stanford being its Vice President. Cecil Sharp declared in 1904 that it was necessary to “get out into the field and listen to what the country folk had to sing” [Day, p18] rather than endlessly discuss the merits on folk song in London.

Vaughan Williams heartily agreed with Sharp’s views and had already been working separately from the Society, giving lectures on folk music across England and at the Montpelier House School for Girls (later renamed Brentwood County High School) in Brentwood (Essex). He described folk music in 1902 as “real music”. “What we need in England, is real music, even if it be only a music-hall song. Provided it possess real feeling and real life, it will be worth all the off scourings of the classics in the world” [Heffer, p22].

Vaughan Williams’ lectures at Brentwood had inspired one of the pupils, Georgina Heatley. After the final lecture she handed him a piece of paper with songs sung by one of the housemaids at her home, which was the Rectory at Ingrave. Georgina suggested that much folk song was rendered, but was unrecorded. With it came an invitation from her father to attend a Parish Tea, which he accepted. At the tea was a 75 year old labourer (a shepherd) by the name of Charles Potipher, dressed in his Sunday best, and probably not comfortable with attending such functions above his station in life at the Rectory. In any case “the old songs he knew were about young love and sex, taboo subjects in the oppressive Victorian atmosphere of the rectory” [Kent, p161]. He was reluctant to sing to Vaughan Williams at tea but promised that if the composer visited his cottage the following day he would sing for him.

So it was that on 4th December 1903 that VW collected – that is noting down the words and tunes – his first folk song, ‘Bushes and Briars’, from the voice of Charles Potipher. This visit to a humble labourer’s cottage ignited the composer’s passion for folk song. In 1904, Vaughan Williams came on a 10-day cycling tour of Ingrave, Willingale, Little Burstead, East Horndon and Billericay collecting further examples. In January 1905 he collected songs from around the Kings Lynn district of Norfolk and whilst on holiday in Sussex and Yorkshire later that year. In 1906 he visited Samuel Childs at the Bell, Willingale, noting down ‘Sweet Primroses’. Vaughan Williams earnestly believed that if these songs were not noted down they might be lost forever. Vaughan Williams became one of the greatest folk song collectors of the early twentieth century. It inspired the writing of his three ‘Norfolk Rhapsodies’ and ‘In the Fen Country’.

Ralph Vaughan Williams jotted the folk songs using pencil and paper. He later made some wax cylinder recordings. One singer was Mrs Humphries, also of Ingrave, who recorded ‘Bushes and Briars’. She had heard her father and grand-father sing this while a youngster living at Blackmore (Essex).

While this mammoth project was in its early stages, Percy Dreamer approached Vaughan Williams to edit a new hymn book. His name had been recommended by Cecil Sharp and Canon Scott Holland. Intended to be a short task it absorbed VW who spent £250 out of his own pocket and took two years. The result was the ‘English Hymnal’ published in 1906. Folk song tunes were included as musical accompaniment to sacred words: ‘Monks Gate’ was a tune Vaughan Williams had collected from a place near Horsham. He used it in the setting of the famous ‘To Be A Pilgrim’.

The English Hymnal draws on a wide range of musical styles but as he wrote in the Preface, “where there is congregational singing it is important that familiar melodies should be employed”. Tunes were written based on folk songs collected: ‘I think when I read the story of old’ was set to a tune named ‘East Horndon’; ‘There’s a friend for little children’ to the tune ‘Ingrave’ and, the most familiar of the three still sung today, ‘It is a thing most wonderful’ set to a tune ‘Herongate’.

“On 4th August 1914 war was declared on Germany, and Vaughan Williams, like the heroes in many of the folk songs he loved so much, felt his duty to enlist as a soldier” [Day, p29].

Charles Potipher died in 1909 and is buried in an unmarked grave in Ingrave churchyard. In early 2001, Brentwood Borough Council decided to commemorate him in the naming of a road on the then new Clements Park estate – Potipher Way. Other roads were named in remembrance of the Vaughan Williams connection, for example, Vaughan Williams Way, Pastoral Way (after his third symphony).

Three years before his death, in 1955, Vaughan Williams revisited Brentwood and recalled his first visit to the town which had had such a profound effect on his music.

In 2003, to mark the centenary of Vaughan Williams’ visit to Ingrave, the Essex Record Office mounted an excellent exhibition entitled ‘That precious legacy’ commemorating the composer and folk singing. The exhibition led to the publication of a book by Sue Cubbins, sound archivist, and is highly recommended for further reading.


Bibliography

The English Hymnal (1906)
Cubbins, Sue. That Precious Legacy. Ralph Vaughan Williams and Essex Folksong (Essex Record Office, 2006)
Day, James. Vaughan Williams (Dent & Sons, London, 1972)
Heffer, Simon. Vaughan Williams (Phoenix, 2000)
Kent, Sylvia. Folklore In Essex (Tempus, 2005)
Brentwood Gazette. 4 January 2001. 8 August 2003.

Other sources

BBC Radio 3 broadcast Twenty Minutes, a Proms Interval programme, entitled ‘Fantasia on a Theme: Bushes and Briars’ on 24 July 2008. The Promenade Concerts featured a whole day devoted to Folk Music, reflecting the musical legacy begun by Vaughan Williams, culminating in sets by Bella Hardy, Martin Simpson and 11-piece band, Bellowhead. Bella Hardy sang a Christmas carol – ‘Down In Yon Forest’ - collected in her native Derbyshire (Castleton) by RVW.