Peek into the Past
Photographs from the 1960s
Folk at the Grove: ‘New Heritage’ photographs 1964
Wassailing
by Brian Senior
Wassailing is very ancient, the word itself comes from the Anglo-Saxon ‘Wass Hael’, meaning ‘to your health’. On twelfth night celebrations a bowl known as a wassailing bowl would be filled with a drink known as lambs wool, each person present would drink from the bowl and wish health to the others present. The wassail bowl itself would have been finely decorated with greenery.
There are many other traditions and customs concerning wassailing, which shows how popular and deeply entrenched in English society the custom of wassailing was and is. Travellers would be known to sell the contents of wassail cups.
Poor people and families would go from house to house with an empty wassail cup singing wassail carols asking for food and drink. They would also carry sticks and branches known as wassail sticks, and these wassail sticks like the wassail bowl would have been finely decorated with greenery and ribbons.
Another wassail tradition is that of wassailing trees, especially that of apple trees. At dusk time the people wassailing the trees would sing songs and pour cider upon the roots of the trees, and pieces of toast would be hung from the branches of the trees. Noises were made with horns to scare away evil spirits.
It was also a tradition that the people who had been wassailing the trees were not allowed back in to their homes until they had answered a question put to them. That wassailing is still so widely and strongly practiced today is evidence of the popularity of this custom throughout the centuries.
'Folk at the Grove' History
by Brian Senior
FORTY-THREE YEARS at the same venue must be some sort of a record, writes Brian Senior, but The Grove isn't the oldest folk club in existence, that honour goes to the Topic in Bradford.
Having the dubious honour of founding The Grove Folk Club back in 1962 and running it for the first fifteen years I was asked by Sam and Ed to write a few words in celebration.
In 1962 Holbeck was a mixture of back to back houses and mills and had a large Irish community. The Grove Inn was at one end of Victoria Road and St Francis's Catholic Church at the other. The church had a superb dance hall attached to it and a bottle of whisky would usually persuade the local priest to allow it to be used for ceilidhs.
Guest Fees in 1968
- Dave Burland appeared for £8
- Christy Moore charged us £10
- Bob & Carol Pegg for £5!
St. Francis's Church and most of the streets have long since been pulled down but somehow the pub remains.
It is still almost exactly as it was forty-three years ago, a tap room, a drinking corridor, two tiny snugs and its famous concert room. Its only concession to 2004 is that it now has a ladies toilet!
From 1970 to 1974 the club hosted the Radio Leeds weekly folk programme. A number of these tapes have survived and the club will soon be releasing a compilation CD.
Memories of ...
The Chieftains - The night The Chieftains were booked at a local college and rang to ask if the bar would still be open if they turned up at 11.30 am. The landlord at the time was Irish. The bar was still open at 2.30am the following morning! What a ceilidh that was!
December 1968
High Level Ranters
White Eagles Jazz Band
Double decker bus .. and pie & peas with Mike Harding The time we had joint evening with Mike Harding's club from Manchester. We hired a coach and arranged to meet them halfway at a pub in Todmorden called the Grove Inn. They arrived in a red double decker bus! there was lots of good music and a pie and pea supper to finish.
Locked out with ..... The McPeake Family Like the night the McPeake Family were booked and when we turned up the pub was locked and the landlord was dead drunk behind the bar. Fortunately the Adelphi pub offered us their concert room and a guard was left at the door of the Grove to direct people the half mile to the Adelphi.
... and 130 capacity! for Hedgehog Pie .... The night Hedgehog Pie were appearing and by removing every table we managed to squeeze 130 people in (the current limit is about 80).
That the Grove Inn has survived at all is a miracle and it now stands on the edge of what will be the largest combined office, hotel and residential development in the U.K.
Geoff Wood
Geoff Sings
Folk Leads Publications 2007