Video clip of Storyweir Performance at Hive Beach

August 8, 2012 by · Comments Off on Video clip of Storyweir Performance at Hive Beach 


A short video clip from the Storyweir performance at Hive Beach, Dorset on Friday 3rd August 2012. Video projections by Proboscis (Gary Stewart & Alice Angus) with live cello by Matthew Benjamin.

Songs and shanties

April 26, 2012 by · Comments Off on Songs and shanties 

Ive been doing a bit of searching around for sea shanties and fishermen’s songs that might be local to Lyme Bay and Bridport and I came across “the Wreck of the Napoli”  by Bob Garrett and Bill Pring which reflects on the ship that ran aground  in Lyme Bay in 2007. Apart from the controversy that followed over what happened to the cargo which washed up in Devon, a great many oil covered birds were washed up on Hive Beach at Burton Bradstock.

This searching for local music has also taken me, via my reading and rummaging around in Real West Dorset, to their article about the British Library folk song map to the  Library’s online sound archive of traditional music, language, accents, and soundscapes called Sounds. It features a series of maps and archival collections. There seems to be a lot of material from West Dorset in the Traditional Music in England Collection and I’ve really enjoyed listening to the local accents and dialects of the time. I particularly liked George Hirst, cowman and ex-serviceman of Burton Bradstock talking in 1944 about Louis Brown of Burton Bradstock who used to sing  ‘A Nutting We Will Go’ and ‘The Cobblers Song’, ‘Sweet Nightingale’  on the accordion, and  finally this song, Barbara Allen recorded in the 1950s and sung by Charlie Wills.

I’d like to hear more about local music and shanties especially any that come directly from Burton Bradstock area.