cassette copy of master reels
Recording lineage unknown
The hamlet stood on a gentle rise in the flat, wheat-growing north-east corner of Oxfordshire. We will call it Lark Rise because of the great number of skylarks which made the surrounding fields their springboard and nested on the bare earth between the rows of green corn. For a few days or a week or a fortnight, the fields stood 'ripe unto harvest'. It was the one perfect period in the hamlet year. The 1880s brought a succession of hot summers, and day after day, as harvest time approached, the children of the end house would wake to the dewy pearly pink of a fine summer dawn, and the swizzh, swizzh of the early morning breeze rustling through the ripe corn beyond their doorstep. ...
With a dynamic promenade staging, featuring extensive live folk music, the production immerses the audience in the intense forgotten communities of a vanishing rural England.
Peter Bullock (Keyboards, tuba), Howard Evans (cornet), Michael Gregory (drums), Ashley Hutchings (leader, bass gtr), Phil Pickett (woodwinds, tenor horn), John Tams (vocals, melodeon, fiddle, banjo, flugelhorn), Graeme Taylor (gtr., banjo), Martin Cathy (vocals, acoustic grt., banjo), Shirley Collins (vocals), David Busby (Morris dance)