Origins: Brigg Fair

Subject: RE: Origins: Brigg Fair
From: GUEST,Nick Dow
Date: 19 Aug 21 - 05:53 PM

Firstly Thank you to our Guest, and to Henry and Iains again for all that typing.
I was aware of the Grainger comment about George Medcalfe and of course thanks to Henry, I'm now aware of Mrs. Hudson's account. I think both accounts are true, which might seem daft until you give it some consideration. I have no doubt our 'young Gypsy' sang the song to Taylor and the assembled camp. I am equally sure that Medcalfe sang it to Taylor as well. I suspect that the conversation may well have been along the lines of 'I heard that song the other night/week/month at 'The Pit' from one of the Gypsy Folk, do you have some words?' 'Well I can only remember two verses.' How many times has this conversation happened in a Folk Club? Medcalfe is not a Gypsy name, not that it matters.
Thanks to Henry again we are now aware the Gypsy Folk stopped in the chalk pits at Binbrook and that Binbrook is 15 miles from Brigg. This means that it was a one, or at the most, two night stop over on the way to the fair. Fifteen miles is nowt in a car, but a good lift by horse and cart. So the picture is now becoming a bit clearer. It means the Gypsy Folk were heading North to Brigg. That narrows it down a lot and one thing immediately occurs to me. I have camped with the the Travellers in Great Ouseburn (North)and Spalding (South) of Binbrook
The Northern Travellers were heading to Boroughbridge, not Brigg, and the Southern Gypsies used to travel to Brigg and/or Appleby back in the day.
I was camping upon the Boswell's ground in Spalding. Mally Boswell (not my wife Mally she had Dolan blood) told me that years ago the families spent the summer on the fruit picking, before heading North to the fairs, then on to wintering grounds.
Mrs. Hudson's interesting story about the 'King' of the Gypsies inviting Joseph Taylor to join them, is also telling an interesting tale in this context. The Boswells are considered to be one of the oldest Romany families to exist in England. There is the 'Book of Boswell, as I am sure you are aware, so the 'King' may well have been a young 'Alger'(Trafalger) Boswell, or possibly his father. The dates seem correct. They were and still are a very proud family.
Yes this may be a flight of fancy, but it fits with the facts as I know them.
It was the Boswells camping at the 'Pit', by a balance of probabilities. I would love to think that Iains and Henry with a bit of help from me have cracked the mystery of which family sang Brigg Fair! However as before my mind is open to other views, and I do tend to get a bit carried away, even at the this late stage.

Subject: RE: Origins: Brigg Fair
From: GUEST,Iains
Date: 20 Aug 21 - 07:48 AM

Looking for the pit/s could be problematical as all traces in the area have vanished, and even where shown to exist all surface signs are obliterated. The steepest road leaving the village is the B1203 heading south westerly. The Ordnance Survey 6 inch to 1 mile Old Map (1888-1913)
clearly shows a couple of chalk pits and a marl pit close along the southern side of the road going to Binbrook top. In the village a couple of springs are labeled and a stream resurges on the north of the village flowing northerly

(So as soon as possible he dashed off to the "pit" where he knew they would make camp. Straight up the steep main road to his stand-point, a gate on the right-hand side. This led to a rough cart track on the edge of the field leading to the pit.)

There are a couple of tracks shown on the right. The first barely out of the village goes some distance towards the stream and a couple of fishponds. The next just outside Kirmond Le Mire leads to a hydraulic ram (presumably lifting water to the big house)and a stream. No sign of pits or quarries anywhere in the immediate vicinity of either track though.
However pits were ephemeral if dug for liming fields and the drift cover is variable over the wolds and I believe only the Gipping Till was calcareous - with the rest of the drift/tills the clay would have required 'sweetening' There are numerous circular features that can be seen on the satellite imagery. They could be infilled pits but equally they could be far more ancient features that ploughing has virtually destroyed. This was a far more densely populated landscape prior to the sheep invasion and the mention of a barrow on the map takes the history back several thousand years so residual rounded patterns could mean all things to all men. It would require boots on the ground and even that may not give definitive explanations. If you scroll back in time on the satellite imagery the crop patterns emphasize some of these features but do not explain them.
Apologies for a bit of a ramble but landscape archeology is a bit of a hobby for me.
I think locating the encampment/s is a bit of a challenge too far.

https://www.archiuk.com/cgi-bin/build_nls_historic_map.pl?search_location=,%20Binbrook,%20Lincolnshire&latitude=53.420157&longitude=-0.195756

Subject: RE: Origins: Brigg Fair
From: GUEST,Nick Dow
Date: 20 Aug 21 - 11:09 AM

Probably! But thanks anyway. Old Gordon Boswell is dead. I'm on to contacting the family to see if our theory is correct.

Subject: RE: Origins: Brigg Fair
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Aug 21 - 04:41 PM

As an interesting aside to the opening of pits and quarries the executors of the Vicar of St Marys Binbrook were hauled off to court in 1818 for allowing 4 acres of land to be excavated for road metal, "to wit, divers large holes, pits and excavations, to wit 100 holes of great width for sand and gravel."
Even back then the major gripe was that reinstatement and making good was non existent.
Today the diocese of Lincoln still has 12000 acres of glebeland, mainly arable farmland.


https://books.google.ie/books?pg=PA568&lpg=PA568&dq=chalk+quarries+at+binbrook+lincs&sig=ACfU3U0i_aBo2F_jd4v80InsAciMm_k2zQ&id=2

Subject: RE: Origins: Brigg Fair
From: GUEST,JHW
Date: 21 Aug 21 - 05:18 AM

In my childhood I went Under the ice in 'Bowes Quarry' so might have been a gonner long since. No trace of that quarry now. Levelled with spoil from 1960s A1 Catterick bypass. (That bypass now bypassed)

Subject: RE: Origins: Brigg Fair
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 21 Aug 21 - 07:44 AM

Very intriguing, Nick. In John Bartholomew's Gazetteer of the British Isles (1887), Spalding is said to be in a rich agricultural district. It still is. Although the final Flower Parade was held in 2013, the autumn Pumpkin Festival, started in 2002, carries on. And the farms still rely on migrant labour; Cabbage and Broccoli Operatives Location – Spalding, Lincolnshire Rate of pay - £8.91 per Hour Start – ASAP Shift – Day shift available - 12 hour shift

From the internet; Deeping St Nicholas; With the proper drainage of the fens in 1845 a church was built and dedicated to St Nicholas and this gave its name to the village which came into existence in about 1850. The reclaimed land is of exceptional fertility and farming was once the main occupation together with associated trades of saddlery, wheelwrights and cart makers. But as mechanisation came, more and more people had to look for work outside the village in nearby Spalding and Peterborough. Cereals and sugar beet are the main crops, potatoes used to be grown in large quantities and the potato railways were in great use. Horses were used to pull the trucks laden with corn or potatoes. Not far away, the Wisbech & Upwell Tramway opened in 1883 to serve a number of small villages on the West Norfolk/Cambridgeshire border, an area of fertile fenland soil. The area was well known for its top fruit, typically apples, pears and plums as well as strawberries, a staple of the goods traffic on the line until it closed in May 1966.

So I wonder if the Boswell family was returning, via Brigg, to Spalding to pick fruit and vegetables throughout late summer and autumn.

And I remember The Lancashire Drift fondly!

Subject: RE: Origins: Brigg Fair
From: GUEST,Nick Dow
Date: 21 Aug 21 - 09:30 AM

Yes that's just as likely. Still have not heard from them yet by Email. I'll give them a ring next week and see who remembers me.

Subject: RE: Origins: Brigg Fair
From: GUEST,Andy Turner
Date: 07 Aug 22 - 03:22 AM

FWIW I located the catalogue record for the John Taylor version in the BL:

Brigg Fair
    Taylor, John (folk) (singer, male)
Item title:        Brigg Fair
Collection title:        Peter Kennedy Collection
SHELFMARK:        C604/1497
Contributor:        Taylor, John (folk) (singer, male)
Performance note:        John Taylor (son of Joseph Taylor and brother of Mary Taylor) sings 'Brigg Fair'.
Recording date:        1944-01-29
Recording location:        Saxby All Saints, Lincolnshire, England, UK
Item duration:        2 min. 10 sec.
Country (origin):        England
Genre:        Folk songs and music
Web theme:        Category: World and traditional music. Europe
Recording note:        Related to the commercial release 'Unto Brigg Fair' published by Folktrax (FTX-135).
Recording note:        Date and location taken from tape box.
Digitised by:        Unlocking Our Sound Heritage (UOSH), funded by the National Lottery. British Library. 2017-2022
Language code:        eng

Holdings
RECORDING        Copies        Material        Location
C604/1497 C5        1        RECORDING        Store


Note
Location = Store
This doesn't appear to have been digitised yet.

However Kennedy's interview with Mary Taylor is online, at https://sounds.bl.uk/World-and-traditional-music/Peter-Kennedy-Collection/025M-C0604X0080XX-0001V0

Subject: RE: Origins: Brigg Fair
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 17 Feb 24 - 11:26 AM

According to Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Joseph Taylor, who learned Brigg Fair from a Gipsy, could remember only two stanzas. But perhaps he only heard two verses from the Gipsy.

It was on the fifth of August
The weather hot and fine
Unto Brigg Fair I did repair
For love I was inclined

I got up with the lark in the morning
With my heart so full of glee
Expecting there to meet my dear
Long time I’d wished to see

One word altered for the sake of rhyme. Percy Grainger published a setting in 1911, adding three more stanzas. Two were borrowed from The Merry King, a song he collected in Sussex.

Brigg - formally Glanford Bridge - is a market town, formerly in the County of Lincolnshire Parts of Lindsey. The Angel, in the market place, is now the district office of North Lincolnshire Council. Brigg is a crossing point on the River Ancholme, surely the straightest river in the world. It flows to the Humber at Ferriby Sluice, passing the Low Villages of Worlaby, Bonby, Saxby All Saints, Horkstow and South Ferriby. Brigg Fair was a popular horse fair and a gathering for Gipsy families.

Our family visited my grandmother in Brigg every half term. I remember that the hard water always left a ring of scum around the hand basin, and that the butter was too cold to spread! I think that Brigg Fair deserves some extra verses linked to Lincolnshire rather than from Sussex. And here they are;

As I passed by The Angel
My love came into view
Her beauty shone just like the sun
In a sky of constant blue

We walked beside the river
It ran so sure and slow
She holds my heart, we ne’er shall part
As long as it may flow

We’ll enjoy the sun of summer
And endure the winter’s storm
When winds blow cold across the wold
We shall stay safe and warm

Subject: RE: Origins: Brigg Fair
From: GUEST,James Phillips
Date: 24 Feb 24 - 12:36 PM

Julie Murphy recorded a really nice version of Brigg Fair with the Welsh band Fernhill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnOXjiAL114