Binsey Treacle Well

In the post on Port Meadow, I mentioned the Binsey Treacle Well.  This led to an interesting conversation in the Rusty Bicycle, as to what a treacle well is, and why they haven't heard of it.  Turns out everyone knows the story of Rosamund the Fair and Henry II at Godstow Nunnery (I love Oxford), so we'll park that one for a while, and concentrate on the black stuff.

I remember when I first heard of the well my thoughts immediately turned to visions of The Goodies, in the episode where they open a clotted cream mine in Cornwall.  Surely, in Binsey, I was going to be confronted by a gushing torrent of thick gunge, like the outfall from some Asiatic factory with dubious health and safety practices.  Sadly, the reality is it's a damp hole in the ground - there isn't even a lion's mouth for the fluid to come out of.   However, the background is only slightly less prosaic than my over-active imagination.

Lewis Carroll of course has a treacle well in Alice in Wonderland, so I'm in good company, but this is "treacle" in its medieval usage of balm, or unguent.  Essentially, it's a spring with purported healing powers which miraculously sprang forth in response to the prayers of St Frideswide. Oxford, of course, is a city of odd saints - Ebbe, Frideswide, Aldate, etc.  The city patron is the second of these, Frideswide, who was once the subject of one of the finest, shortest sermons I've ever heard.

Picture the scene; a dessicated church in the centre of Oxford, Mattins drawing to a close on St Frideswide's Day and an equally dessicated vicar mouting the pulpit.  The thin, crackly reed of his voice begins:

"Very little is known of St Frideswide. She lived. And, we may infer from her canonisation, she was good. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost Amen."

Anyway, I digress. Referring to Westwood and Simpson's Lore of the Land, we discover that Frideswide had established a religious community in Oxford in about 700AD, under the protection of her father, who was the local potentate.  On her father's death, a chap called Algar of Leicester decided it would be rather a good scheme to be married to Frideswide, so pitched up and offered to do the decent thing.  Upon being rebuffed he decided that kidnap was the next best option, and essentially made a lunge for her, whereupon our city's patron took to her heels Tam Lin style and made a run for it.

Crashing through the swamps to the west of the city, she ended up on the then island of Beltona (modern Binsey) where she found sanctuary, had a bit of a pray, and brought forth the healing waters.  Following Frideswide's death, the well at Binsey became an important site of pilgrimage - at one point there were over 20 hostels at Seacourt (now a glamorous park and ride destination) to cope with the throng.  It was all a bit like the ghats in Calcutta (on a smaller and noticeably less Indian scale, obviously), with people coming to avail themselves of the miraculous cure.

Post reformation, it all went rather quiet, until in 1874 the local vicar decided to do a bit of "restoration." As with most things the Victorians touched, this bears about as much relation to what had been there before as the Olympic Park in London does to the pre-blitz East End. Now, it's slightly off the beaten track, but it's worth a look, if you ever find yourself in The Perch with  20 minutes to kill.  You can cheat, and used google to find out what you're supposed to be looking for, but I'm not going to put up a picture, so you can do a bit of proper exploring if you want!

Save Port Meadow

Let's get very local for a minute.  For those of you unfamiliar with Oxford, Port Meadow is an area of common land to the north west of the city centre, which runs from the village of Wolvercote down the Woodstock road to the suburb of Jericho.  Horses and cattle graze on it, the Thames runs through it, and there are a host of small things to go and look at - the Treacle Well at Binsey, for example, or the nunnery at Godstow, from where Rosamund Clifford sallied out to be courted by Henry II.

It's a green lung for the north of the city.  When I lived in Jericho it was basically my back garden - we picnicked on it, swam in the river on hot summer evenings after work, or drifted up to the Trout at Wolvercote or the Perch at Binsey to spend the day with the newspapers.

But one of the chief attractions has always been the views of Oxford.  They're not as spectacular as those from South Park, or Boar's Hill, but there was a panorama of the dreaming spires - the Tower of the Winds, PhilJim, St Barnabas, St Mary the Virgin, the Rad Cam, the Engineering Science Building (the last one may be a joke).

Jericho, however, is full.  What had once been a small densely populated district of workers in the prinitng house of the OUP decayed to the extent that it was nearly demolished in the 1960s.  Students brought it back to life, and then refugees from London arrived to raise their children.  It's all got a bit glitzy, and pricey.  The City Council, wanting to reduce some of the pressure on the housing stock in Oxford, has mandated both Oxford University and Brookes to reduce the numbers of their students living in private rented accommodation in the city.

Which brings us to Roger Dudman Way.  The university has erected a number of accommodation blocks along the railway line and canal from the west end of Walton Well Road.  In some ways, this is exactly what is needed - getting large numbers of students out of the private sector and freeing up housing for local people.  Unfortunately it's also obliterated the views from Port Meadow, and raidcally changed the character of that end of Oxford.  Debate rages in the local press (this is Oxford, city of lost causes and green ink), about how far what has been built reflects accurately what the city council was shown in the drawings, but the fact remains that somewhere along the line someone has got it wrong.

There's a petition live now to call the whole thing in and get it altered.  No one wants the blocks demolished, but the top two stories could, and arguably ought, to be removed.

you can sign it here:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/850/008/830/port-meadow-oxford-damaged-views/

Gone to Earth

Powell and Pressburger made what to my mind are some of the greatest films of all time - not just greatest British films, but films full stop.  In a glorious run from The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp through the The Red Shoes they showcased virtuoso direction, cinematography, and a grasp of the importance of place in their filmaking.

One of the things they did very well was evoking a sense of nature, most notably to the common viewer in I Know Where I'm Going, but it absolutely haunts all their work.  If you watch Powell's much earlier solo venture The Edge of World it quickly becomes clear that the island itself is the star, and the people crossing it of no more real importance than the sheep or the eagles.  It's about impermanence, more than anything, and the sense that sometimes you just have to give up on what you're doing, even at the expense of your life (whether physically, as you cling to the top of a sheer waterfall hundreds of feet above the rocks below; or more spiritually, turning your back on a way of life that has been core to your community for generations.  It must have taken real guts to write the sort of letter to your laird that begged for a steamer to evacuate your village.

Where the wheels slightly come off the wagon though is with the postwar Gone to Earth.  It's beautifully shot up on the Stiperstones, and around Much Wenlock.  There are some marvellous trademark Powell and Pressburger set pieces  - the full immersion baptism in the river, and the slow procession of the traction engine to the village show are as good as anything you will see in any of their other pictures.  They even managed to convincingly portray foxhunting (albeit with what look like beagles).  A common complaint of the connoisseur in everything from Brideshead Revisited to Downton Abbey is that the hunting is all wrong.  But there's none of that artificial blowing the hounds along to the horn and the start of the whip - these hounds are flying, right out ahead.  As an historical record it's marvellous.

I think the real weakness is the plot.  Gone to Earth is an adaptation from Mary Webb's novel, rather than a Pressburger screenplay, and to be quite honest it shows.  There's not much to be going on with here, it's basically Catherine Cookson avant la lettre and pretty thin gruel at that (with a slightly dubious rape/sexual assault plot thread). Jennifer Jones is not really leading lady material in this (and her accent is frankly risible - Long Mynd by way of Savannah maybe?), and the two leading men aren't given much to do except snarl (David Farrar) or pretty much stand around and invite people to walk over you (Cyril Cusack). Some of the supporting players are much better - Sybil Thorndike is solid as ever, and there's a great little cameo by the young George Cole.

It's a wonder there's any film to see at all in some ways.  David O Selznick (probably seeing the rushes and thinking "what in God's name have I just financed?") mauled it terribly so that by the time it went on general release in the US there was only something like 20 minutes of the original film left in it.  However, it was restored and re-surfaced at some point in the 1980s, permitting critical re-examination. This time around, the overriding opinion was more positive, but it has still sunk below the surface again - I had to buy a South Korean import....

So, what are we to make of Gone to Earth? Slender plot, variable acting certainly; but the ambition and skill of P&P manages to shine through regardless.  It's a love letter to rural England, and Shropshire in particular - and it deserves to be more widely viewed.  If I was trying to win new converts to the Powell and Pressburger shrine, there's no way on God's green earth that I would start them off on this film.  But, if you can get hold of it, and you've got an hour or two to spare, then do watch it. It wasn't quite the last of England, but it was very nearly the last of Powell and Pressburger.

London Welsh - part 2

5 point deduction, 5 points suspended and a £15,000 fine.  The judgement on the RFU's website makes pretty grim reading....  Inevitably, Welsh are appealing.  Watch this space.

London Welsh

No, not the rugby club of that name playing in Oxford - although I'm sure I'll write something when the RFU get their act together and publish their findings from the recent disciplinary hearing....

This morning I had to go up to London for a meeting.  Just occasionally, despite my better judgment, it's unavoidable.  The train back to Oxford was delayed, and while I was hanging aroungd on the Lawn at Paddington station I was slightly surprised to see the distinctive form of a Festiniog Railway locomotive on platform 9.  Princess, identical twin to Prince - Britain's oldest working steam engine in regular traffic - and built at George England's Hatcham Ironworks in 1863.  The Festiniog had 5, all to the same basic design:

Prince and Palmerston are still in service, Little Giant was cut up in the early 20th century, and Welsh Pony used to stand in the middle of a flowerbed in Porthmadog - I fell off it multiple times between the ages of 8 and 13....  I believe Welsh Pony has now been rescued and is being cosmetically restored for a slightly more dignified fate.

The last time I saw Princess was on display in the Station restaurant in Porthmadog in about 1990 - she's been rescued from there and tarted up a bit for the 150th anniversary of the Festiniog Railway (and her own 150th birthday this year).  If you happen to find yourself at a loose end in Paddington, she's there until 6 weeks after St David's Day.

Behind the silence

Normal service has been slightly knocked sideways by a particularly busy period at work, and it's going to stay busy for a week or so as I pinball around Europe. But there are questions on the horizon which need a bit of investigation;

What do we think of UKIP, in the light of last week's Eastleigh by-election?

How, exactly, did Gone to Earth end up the way it did, given its Powell and Pressburger pedigree?

Army 20:20 - what does it mean for us?

In part answer of the last, first, the 7th Armoured Brigade is a number - making it an infantry brigade is not the end of the world for heaven's sake!

Watch this space....

Some thoughts on Richard III

If you've read your Shakespeare, Richard III is practically the devil incarnate; in the first Blackadder series, he's a particularly malevolent turn from Peter Cook; for GR Elton he was the last of the monarchs before the "Tudor Revolution in Government" - the bane of an A Level student's life since the 1960s.

Problem is, of course, that not only do we know little about him, but that what we do know was in large part handed down by Tudor propagandists.  If you're Henry VIII, you're a born king, with no need to polish your ancestry up a bit.  But if you're before or after him....  Henry VII was a usurper - even if you accept his right to the throne there's no getting away from the fact that he could only achieve it in battle.  His overall position was weak, so it's always nice in that position if you've got a friendly chronicler who can boost you a bit by making your predecessor look bad.  Similarly, if you're Shakespeare, then you've got the aftermath of Henry VIII uppermost in your mind - succession is everything, whether you're trying to justify the position of Elizabeth I or James I....

Now, of course, Richard has been found under a car park in Leicester (2,500 yards under if you believe one of the Daily Mail's more glorious recent typos) - if you're a Tudor, that's probably quite fitting, if not actually better than they can ever have planned.  But, as we descend into the inevitable parochial arguments about where he should be buried, and by what rite, it's probably as well to try and put him into some kind of context.

I'm certainly no member of the Richard III society, but I do feel that he needs a bit of a reassessment.  The Elton view, that before Henry VII all was darkness, is clearly old hat.  It's even possible to rehabilitate certainly the first reign of Henry VI, and Edward IV has always had a good press, but it's possible now to see Richard as a small part of the creation of English bureaucracy, the foundation of what, for want of a better term, was the basis of legal aid, and a swathe of really quite decent legislation in his short years on the throne which really mark him out as pretty much what you want in a late medieval king.

Of course, the big problem is getting past the poor old princes in the tower.  Without going into the Blackadder counterfactual that he was in fact a loving uncle who doted on his nephews, there is scant evidence for what really happened there. I don't want to push this too far, because in historical terms it's the mother of fifteenth century conspiracy theories, but if you want someone with the motive, opportunity and means, look no further than Mr Henry Tudor, of Wales....

Whatever the truth, it's probable and (just good politics) that his reputation was blackened by his successors to a greater or lesser extent, but now that we have a body it's perhaps time for a sober reassessment of his strengths and weaknesses.  He certainly wasn't a saint, but, to adapt Shakespeare's lines for his earlier namesake Richard II,

"not all the water in the rough rude sea can wash the balm from an anointed king."

And he was an anointed king - by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and, in his own opinion, by God.  I'm not sure we're in a better position to judge.

The politics of railway enthusiasm

Over at Liberal England lately there has been an interesting take omn the politics or other wise of railway preservation, by Joseph Boughey.  His take on it is certainly interesting, although I can't help feeling that there is a certain element of wish fulfilment about it - particularly in trying to equate the early railway preservation movement to modern green politics. 

What I don't think is up for debate is the "small is beautiful" element of the movement, in as much as the preserved railways are often most successful when they can present as the underdog.  An interesting observation of the preserved railway scene is that the more successful a particular railway gets, the more divergence there is between the aims of the company and that of its volunteer workforce.  You can see this with the way people leave the premier lines after decades as a volunteer, because it no longer feels like they're all in it together.  There's now a "commercial manager" where once there was the vicar's wife, and money is spent on websites and e-commerce, when they spent half of 1984 restoring an Edmondson ticket press....

In some ways this has been highlighted by the growth in "secondary" preserved lines over the past 2 decades.  The success of the original pioneer lines has become so total that they are now operating at the level of doing up lineside houses to show what a railwayman's cottage was like, or building mutimillion pound interpretation centres for visiting schoolchildren.  The role of the enthusiastic amateur, who got involved simply because he'd seen the Titfield Thunderbolt and didn't want his local station to close, is less clear here.  If we take preserved railways as being about nostalgia, then it should come as little surprise that they contain within them individuals who are nostalgic about the nostalgia, and who believe that their own particular line hasn't been quite the same since it stopped being about an ex-industrial tank engine and a couple of Mark 1 coaches.  Such people withdraw their labour and shift their focus 10 miles down the road to another branchline.  The problem here. of course, is that these newer lines were often passed over by the original preservationists because they weren't as scenic, or there were problems with the trackbed - essentially, there was a reason why they weren't top of the list for preservation.  What you get, then is a glut of lines being preserved for the sake of being preserved, just because the post-Beeching generation are now at a lifestage where they have the time and the money to be able to do it.  It is genuinely questionable how many of these smaller lines will still be with us in say 20 years time.

The Titfield Thunderbolt is in any case an interesting film to mention, because whilst viewed now it is a bit of a curio, in context it's actually deeply subversive.  What we're being asked to buy into is the idea of the local village buying its railway and running it itself when British Railways withdraw their support.  In the 21st century this is a distinctly period piece, but what people tend to miss is that the villagers are not running it as a tourist attraction - their whole plan is to continue providing a service.  This isn't about nostalgia so much as the much derided big society.  Of course it helps that the vicar is a steam engine nut, but the whole point is that they are using steam traction because that's what everyone else is using.  The 14xx tank they have might look antiquated, but it's actually all of about 20 years old at the time of the film - indeed, the opening scene shows the Titfield-Mallingford service crossing over a passing express, itself hauled by a steam locomotive.  The film has been adopted by the preservation movement as a totem of the need to keep hold of the past, whereas seen in context it's actually the equivalent of someone saving their local line today and buying a Class 150 Sprinter to run it  -for the Titfield Thunderbolt, steam is incidental, it's the service that they're trying to support. Quite apart from anything else, the buy-in from the local squire, vicar, and millionaire rather gives the lie to this being anything to do with "green politics" - this is near luddite preservation of the old way of doing things, by the pillars of society.  That particular strain of railway preservation is actually One Nation Conservatism if it's anything.

I mention the Titfield Thunderbolt because it's based on the experiences of Tom Rolt and the other pioneers who rescued the Talyllyn Railway at the beginning of the 1950s (indeed, their initial hope was that the film could have been made on their line).  Rolt is an interesting character, not least because he so quickly took charge - but that level of autocracy is common in the preservation movement, simply beacause high calibre people are spread so thinly.  I don't mean that to be a pejorative judgment necessarily, it's just that when it comes down to it even the most voluntary of the preservation schemes are businesses, and they need business brains to keep them afloat - even if it's just to keep the line there for the the enthusiasts to give up their time to.  Given that people who focus on commercial success have a tendency to be doing so in slightly more lucrative fields, there is consequently a need for the preserved lines to have to take what they can get.  You could say the same about  a local zoo, or a League 2 football club, but it remains the case that the movement provides a stage for the wannabe demagogue to strut upon.

I think ultimately the truth is that the politics of the railway preservation movement is as varied as the people involved in it.  You'd struggle to get away from the nostalgia angle of course, but there is a definite appeal to the sort of person from any walk of life who wants to try and hold back the tide, or maintain a bit of the old way, just for the sake of doing it.  Mr Culpepper in "A Canterbury Tale" would doubtless be  campaigning for the preservation of the line from Chillingbourne to Canterbury in the post war years, just as assiduously as he worked to preserve the pilgrims' bend above his village in pre-war England.  It can be claimed for the supporters of any political movement or none, but it does seem to be much more prevalent in Britain than anywhere else - possibly because we have the luxury of worrying about things we really don't need to worry about in the great scheme of things - but then that's another angle entirely....

Pause for rugby predictions....

Once upon a time, Grandstand would have been starting about now, but in its absence, let me just predict this year's 6 Nations:

1 England
2 France
3 Ireland
4 Wales
5 Scotlamd
6 Italy

Having said that, I reckon it breaks down rather neatly into three pairs, the order within each is interchangeable - we shall see.

Meanwhile, tomorrow, London Welsh play Newport Gwent Dragons at the Kassam.....

Sunday Matinee: The Way to the Stars

Powell and Pressburger had several films which dealt obliquely with the relationship between the British and the Americans in wartime - A Matter of Life and Death and A Canterbury Tale for starters - but the one that I think really nailed it came from a different stable; Anthony Asquith's 1945 picture The Way to the Stars.

From a purely British war film point of view it had everything that made the genre a success, John Mills, Michael Redgrave and Stanley Holloway heading the British contingent, Douglass Montgomery and Bonar Colleano for the US (there's probably a post to written in the future just on Colleano - he's largely forgotten now, but I promise you you'd recognise him if you saw him).

But it had a little bit more than that - something which elevates it above, say, Reach for the Sky, or even Angels One Five.  The Way to the Stars has soul. In part, that's probably down to the Terence Rattigan screenplay, which is spare and econonomical, but at the same time hugely affecting.

Charting the evolution of a single air base in eastern England, from use by the RAF through to takeover by the USAAF, it is a powerful study of character - from the initial gung-ho unwillingness of the Americans to listen to hard won advice from the RAF liaison officer (Mills), through to the developing relationships with the women of the village, this film is as affecting a piece of cinema as you'll see.  I'm really not trying to traduce Montgomery when I describe him as a poor man's Jimmy Stewart, but that's the sort of bracket he's operating in, and he's really the star of the film - his developing relationship with Rosamund John's war-widowed landlady is particularly senstively handled, and there is some very affecting use of children's parties to highlight growing and deepening bonds.  Indeed, I defy you to hold back the pricking at your eyes at the end where Colleano has to step in as entertainer when Johnny (Montgomery) has had to "go away." Its all so beautifully done.  And, through it all, like a metronome, is the steady presence of John Pudney's immortal poem "For Johnny."

It's Sunday afternoon, the Rusty Bicycle and Oxfork are full - you won't get a table if you're not already there.  Just sit inside and watch this - it's a little masterpiece.

A few thoughts for Burns night

The other day, I was watching Michael Powell's early masterpiece "The Edge of the World." Inspired by the evacuation of St Kilda, it tells the story of a community torn over the way forward - do they stay and make the best of the only life any of them have ever known, or do they cut their losses and leave?

Of course, Scotland has been gearing up to ask, and answer, a similar question for some time now, with a final agreement reached last year on a referendum for 2014 on whether it should remain part of the United Kingdom. As in Powell's film, there are voices on both sides of the argument, but it is a fairly fundamental question that faces the Scots - stick with the UK, or go it alone; reset the clocks to pre 1707 and forge a new path.

I've always been fairly persuaded that the SNP would lose that vote.  But now we have to factor in something else. Europe.

The prospect on a referendum on the UK's future in the EU is a potential disruptor for the unionist cause.  If the majority of the UK votes to leave the EU, but there isn't a majority in Scotland, then Scotland would presumably be taken out of the EU along with everyone else, but against the wishes of its population.  Scots might presumably look over the border between now and 2014 and wonder what the English are thinking.  The unionists have been saying that a vote for independence would be to introduce uncertainty over Scotland's future, particularly with regard to automatic continued membership of the EU. This is a fairly convincing argument.  However, if we're now saying that the only way to guarantee continued Scottish presence within the EU (even if there has to be a hiatus while they apply for membership) is a vote FOR independence then the rules of the game have changed slightly.  All of this presupposing of course that the Scots are more pro-EU in the first place.

Since devolution a lot of genies have escaped from a lot of bottles, and now that's happening on both sides of the border-that-currently-isn't-a-border. Mr Cameron could be shaping up as the Prime Minister who took Britain out of Europe and presided over the break-up of the UK.  Well, it's certainly a legacy.....

Interesting times.

The electric heart of England

Last weekend's castaway on Desert Island Discs was Martin Carthy.  Although he's rightly a folk legend, one of his throwaway lines in particular resonated with me  - that the average man in the street would be "blown away" if a decent morris dancer danced in front of them.

I have to admit to being ambivalent about the morris - there is a certain element of leather elbow patched, Cortina driving geography teacher about its image, but it really doesn't do to be snobby about these things. Having said that, I still think anyone using the words "methinks," "mine host," or "quaffed" probably needs to be rapidly censured.  I've come to be more appreciative of the genre and its place in our folklore since being in Oxfordshire (it's difficult to ignore on the streets of Oxford around May day), and done well it can be very good indeed.

But at the tail end of the 60s morris was moribund.  After having been revived much earlier in the 20th century in Thaxted it had once again fallen by the wayside, with the early 1960s folk resurgence focusing much more tightly on Britain's musical heritage.  So it must have seemed to many that the form was about to be lost.

If, then, you're Ashley Hutchings, riding high on the success of the early Fairport albums, you decide to do something about it.  But what a something.  It's genuinely difficult to pitch this to an impartial audience  so if you've wandered here by accident you'll have to take my word for it; he made a folk-rock electric morris album.

Uniting morris' John Kirkpatrick with fiddler Barry Dransfield and Fairport's Dave Mattacks and Richard Thompson, they set about a deliberately uncurated album of morris tunes, with the idea not so much being to preserve the genre in aspic, as take it on through both traditional and modern instruments - morris as a living form even as it must have appeared in its death throes.  Add in contributions from the ethereal Shirley Collins, and the Chingford Morris Men (God knows how they got them all in the studio), and they created something very special - vibrant, alive, shorn of cliche, and giving dignity to a very English folk form.

Particular highlights on the album range  from the moment in Morris Call where a very tentative fiddle is utterly swamped by the joyous arrival of accordion, bass guitar and drums, right through to a barely controlled version of the Cuckoo's Nest (possibly the filthiest song in a genre not exactly known for holding back - it's right up there with say The Bonny Black Hare).  Everything about Morris On screams England and Englishness - you've got ploughboys, drinking, sailors, tailors, and a bunch of raucous tunes any one of which, as Ashley Hutchings once remarked, would do as our national anthem (although, as suggested, some of the lyrics might be slightly problematic....).

The album is a folk rock essential, even for those who think they hate the morris - it brought morris to a new generation and was instrumental in kickstarting the resurgance of the art in the early 1970s.  I've still got no wish to get involved in the dancing side of things, but it's great that other people want to do it, and Morris On holds a worthy, if ever so slightly bizarre, place in my affections.

Hartlepool as muse

PG Wodehouse memorably reviewed the first Flashman novel in terms of privileged "watcher of the skies" observers being present at the birth of something special.  I suppose, to extend a battered metaphor, that's how I felt at the Whitby Folk Festival in 2011.

A capella folk is not the most obvious genre for young musicians to start out in - risking credibility immediately by coming out somewhere on the spectrum between The Flying Pickets and a poor man's Ladysmith Black Mambazo.  However, that night, high on the headland overlooking the harbour, we made the acquaintance of The Young 'Uns.  Over a 45 minute set they showcased a seemingly effortless ability to marry three part harmony with North Eastern folk.  Obviously, with a new band it's easiest to measure them by their interpretations of standards, and their rendition of John Ball certainly seemed competent enough.  But what really made the difference was the strength of their own material.  It just didn't seem like there was going to be a gap in the market any time soon for 3 twentysomethings and an accordion.

How wrong can you be? The Young 'Uns have a sound quite unlike anyone else out there currently.  Seth Lakeman's a great fiddle player, but his material can seem a bit one note - if he had the courage to slow things down a bit and get rid of the softer folk rock elements he'd be roughly in the same ballpark.  Similarly, if the Unthanks were just a bit more cheerful.....

The Young 'Uns first album, "When Our Grandfathers Said No," hit the streets at the back end of last year, and is about as far away from the North London "I can't get over Laura Marling" banjo feyness of your Mumfords as you can get (and a prudent man would like to go much further).  What you've got here, is love, loss, heavy industry, beautiful harmonies, and the glamourisation of Hartlepool that that town has long unaccountably lacked.

I like Hartlepool personally; it has a certain honesty and stark beauty - especially to the north, where it shades round to Easington and Seaham Harbour.  However, I'd be lying if I said I'd ever seen it as romantic - I once stood above the town and took in the panorama, from the steelworks via Cameron's Brewery to the nuclear power station, and wondered who the town fathers had upset....  The closing track on the album, Jenny Waits for Me, which they performed in Whitby 2 years ago, makes it all much clearer.  This is real folk, it's also real life - from the depressing drudgery of "The Chemical Worker's Song," to the gruff honesty of "Love in a Northern Town," the Young 'Uns take you further into Britain's folk scene than many will be comfortable with, but God they can sing.

Disappointingly, they won't be at Cropredy this year (my one man lobbying mission obviously needs to step up a gear), but they are on the Whitby bill again - go and see them, and, if you can't, buy their album.