The Alnwick gathering started in 1949, and went on until 2 years ago, when it finally died due to lack of support from punters, both musicians, dancers and audience.

One of the factors is supposed to be the sheer number of other events available now. Lack of support for competitions was another - in the 1950s competition classes could last several hours, whilst in the last ten years one person per class was often the norm.

In the 50s buses were put on from local communities to get people to and from it.

Forster Charlton's recordings - about 1200 reel to reel tapes and several hundred cassettes are in the process of evaluation, though there is much material not relevant to anything trad. or folk. None of them are labelled, so the whole lot have got to be checked.

Paws