Now I know it is stating the obvious that every age makes its own music and that listening to it is to step back into the past.
Listen to a sea shanty and you could be with the men of Nelson’s navy preparing for Trafalgar.
While those bitter angry songs of handloom weavers and textile workers pitch you into the Industrial Revolution with its heady promise of a different world where all things were possible.
But a world which existed against a backdrop of poverty and the exploitation of those doomed to live out short lives in awful conditions with only the workhouse to look forward to.
All of which may seem far away from rural Chorlton in the 1840s, or the countryside where Sir Nicholas Mosley built his fine hall at Hough End in 1596.
But not so. Rural poverty and poor housing with the ever present threat of disease and destitution were just as much the possible fate of the agricultural labourer and his family as they were of the textile worker in Ancoats.
And Sir Nicholas despite his fine reputation and even finer house was known for his ruthless determination to extract all he could from his tenants at a time when the government of the first Elizabeth forced through harsh laws to deal with the poor and homeless and saw more value in a field of sheep than a field of corn worked by a dozen farm hands.
So songs bring back all that history and some at least will act as a backdrop to the book launch of Hough End Hall the Story on tonight at the Lloyds Hotel.
After all the hall didn’t exist in isolation and for over half its existence it was a farmhouse rather than the grand residence of the great and the good.
And it may well be that the songs sung by the Beech Road Singers will have been known and enjoyed by the people of Chorlton in the 1840s, been played at harvest time at Hough End Hall and even accompanied Sir Nicholas’s servants as they prepared the rooms for his return from the great matters defending England at the time of the Armada.
Well maybe.
Either way the night will be a good one with it celebration of a new book on the history of the hall, some fine music and much more.
Picture; HDR effect of The Beech Band © 2015 Peter Topping
Painting of Hough End Hall © 2014 Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures
Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk
Facebook: Paintings from Pictures
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| The Beech Road Singers |
While those bitter angry songs of handloom weavers and textile workers pitch you into the Industrial Revolution with its heady promise of a different world where all things were possible.
But a world which existed against a backdrop of poverty and the exploitation of those doomed to live out short lives in awful conditions with only the workhouse to look forward to.
But not so. Rural poverty and poor housing with the ever present threat of disease and destitution were just as much the possible fate of the agricultural labourer and his family as they were of the textile worker in Ancoats.
And Sir Nicholas despite his fine reputation and even finer house was known for his ruthless determination to extract all he could from his tenants at a time when the government of the first Elizabeth forced through harsh laws to deal with the poor and homeless and saw more value in a field of sheep than a field of corn worked by a dozen farm hands.
So songs bring back all that history and some at least will act as a backdrop to the book launch of Hough End Hall the Story on tonight at the Lloyds Hotel.
After all the hall didn’t exist in isolation and for over half its existence it was a farmhouse rather than the grand residence of the great and the good.
Well maybe.
Either way the night will be a good one with it celebration of a new book on the history of the hall, some fine music and much more.
Picture; HDR effect of The Beech Band © 2015 Peter Topping
Painting of Hough End Hall © 2014 Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures
Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk
Facebook: Paintings from Pictures
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