Back in July 'Marje' wrote:

"I'm not convinced that there is no real tradition of harmony singing in the UK.

I know Vaughan Williams declared that the English tradition was a single melody line, not harmonised, but he happened to collect most of his songs from individual, mostly elderly people singing solo in their homes."

I suspect that if there had been a 'real tradition of harmony singing in the UK' that Vaughan Williams would have noticed (and noted) that those 'elderly people' (Henry Burstow, Harriet & Peter Verrall, James Carter etc., etc.) had a tendency to turn everything into a grim and mournful dirge - much as many modern, harmony-loving folk club singers/audiences tend to. Instead those elderly people left us a glorious legacy of (single line) tunes which are often, in my opinion, ruined by attempts to harmonise them.