Early Years in Leeds

By the age of twenty-one, I’d completed a five-year apprenticeship in General Engineering and was living at home with my mother and stepfather. I wanted to continue my training and become a qualified Draughtsman, but to do this I would have to serve another apprenticeship as a Junior Draughtsman until I was 30 years old.

As there were no vacancies for trainee Draughtsmen locally, I decided to cast my net wider. The local Labour Exchange informed me that in Leeds there was a shortage of Draughtsmen, and a three-month crash course in Draughtsmanship was due to start there in a few weeks time. They also stated that the successful completion of the course guaranteed a job. I made up my mind to uproot, and in September 1963 I landed in Leeds just as the Folk Music Revival was in its infancy.

I successfully completed the course and got a job as a Junior Draughtsman at the Monk Bridge Iron and Steel Company on Whitehall Road just off Leeds City Centre.

At the time, the nationally agreed minimum scale of pay and holiday entitlement for Draughtsmen was negotiated by the Draughtsmen’s Union, DATA, and as all Drawing offices were closed shops, everyone had to be a member of the Union. New Junior Draughtsmen had to enrol initially at the monthly Union’s meeting held at the Ship Inn, Briggate, in Leeds city centre, and it was while queuing up to enrol that I met two other new recruits, John, and George. We had exchanged words while waiting, so after we were all signed up, we retreated to the bar, bought a drink, and sat down together, and immediately hit it off.

John was from Woodlesford just outside Leeds, and George from Wakefield, and we were all starting out on new careers. John worked for a firm of Shop fitters, George was working for Waddington’s as a carton designer, and I was employed as an engineering designer. In the ensuing conversation, I discovered John played the guitar, George, who was of Polish extraction, said he was no singer, but he could play the mandolin quite well. I told them I’d been the lead singer in a skiffle group at school in the 1957/58 skiffle boom, so we decided to have a go at forming a trio.

Jug and Bottle Washers Jug Band, Jon Rennard, guitar & kazoo , Mark Peers on jug, and Johnny Wall playing funnel at Whitby Folk Festival 1965

I was already familiar with the already blossoming folk song movement, already owning records by Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary and the Clancy Brothers so I decided to check out the local Leeds Folk Scene.

The only folk club in I found out about was at the Union Tavern on Meadow Lane on a Monday Night, and I decided to pay it a visit.
On my first visit there I made friends with the resident singers. I didn’t sing on the first night, but promised to sing the following week.
A right hotch-potch of music was performed on the night, blues, Irish and English traditional folk, jazz, and jug band music.
Included among the residents were Brian Senior, Bob Spray, Bernard Fawcett and the Jug and Bottle Washers Jug Band - Johnny Wall, Jim and Mark Peers and Jon Rennard.

During the evening I picked up a flyer advertising that Brian Senior and Keith Marsden were running a folk club, at the Grove Inn, Back Row, Holbeck on Friday nights.

Many of the Union Tavern residents went on to open their own Folk Clubs. Johnny Wall, The Memphis on Thursday at the Coach and Horses on Beeston Road; John Rennard, The Peel Hotel, Boar Lane on Tuesdays; Bob Spray at the Adelphi on Leeds Bridge on Saturday Nights, and I attended every opening night.

John and George both had evening classes on weekdays, so we were only able to get together at weekends. George discovered there was folk session on a Saturday afternoon at a pub called Alfred Moody’s on Bread Street in the centre of Wakefield. It was a quite ancient, dimly lit, one roomed bar full of character a real spit and sawdust pub, there was sawdust on the floor, but there didn’t appear to be any spittoons. We went there a couple of times, but never really felt at home there. We still met regularly at the monthly union meetings at the Ship and at one John suggested that as Easter was coming up we should go camping together over Easter weekend. I had a tent that three could sleep, at a push, and primus stove, John had a car, and we all had sleeping bags. So, after some deliberation, we all agreed it was a good idea, and decided we’d go to Scarborough.

The Newcastle Packet
Sandside, Scarborough

We got to Scarborough about midday on Easter Saturday, but where we pitched the tent I couldn't remember to save my life. By tea time we were wandering along the sea front, complete with instruments, looking for somewhere to play when we spotted a harbour side an inn called ‘The Newcastle Packet’. We thought it looked a decent pub so decided to go in for a drink. While we were having a drink we got asked to play, which we did, and we stayed there playing on and off until closing time.

On Sunday morning John said did anyone fancy going to Whitby as he hadn't been there since he was a boy. Neither George nor myself had ever been to Whitby, and as John was the driver, we soon agreed. We arrived in Whitby and parked in the Church Street Car Park and we wandered around Whitby, keeping an eye out for another decent looking pub to have a drink in, and maybe play.

Pub bar room with old fashioned gas lighting

The small front bar of the Black Horse.
The gas lighting was changed to electric in the late 1990s.

It was just after mid-day, opening time, when we spied the Black Horse, near the Market Place on the older Eastside cobbled end of Church Street. We went in, purchased a drink and sat down in the small front bar of the gas lit pub. There were six or seven regulars in the bar and one asked if we would give them a song. The Landlord, okayed it so we sang a couple of songs. I then asked if there were any local Whitby songs that anybody knew, and a lady called Mrs Annie Nicholson sang a love song about a drowned sailor who was washed up on the beach near Robin Hoods Bay which she called ‘From Stowbrow to Bay’. After that the Landlord, John Marsden, realised it was Sunday and at the time, the performing of music on a Sunday wasn’t allowed, so if we wanted to play anymore we would have to move into the back room. We said goodbye to the people in the front bar, promised to return soon and get down the words of the song, and moved into the back bar.

We stayed there until closing time, which was then 2pm on a Sunday, then spent the rest of the day being tourists.

We headed out of Whitby to find somewhere to camp overnight, and just as twilight was falling we pulled up in a lay-by at the bottom of Pond Hill on the Scarborough Road. We decided to pitch the tent a few yards into a copse adjacent to the lay-by, so the tent couldn’t be seen from the road. With the tent pitched and the sleeping bags installed we made our way to the nearby Flask Inn for a final drink. Next morning on the way home we all stated that we’d all had a really good time and should do it again. John said what about the coming Whitsuntide holiday weekend, but we should go to the Dales next time and we all agreed.

I fell in love with Whitby on that very first visit on Easter Sunday in 1964, and it became a lifelong obsession. I returned to the Black Horse later that year and noted down the words of the song from Mrs Nicholson, and in August of the following year 1965, I attended the first Whitby Folk Festival and have done so every year since. In the ensuing years I met my first wife in Whitby in 1966, married my current wife Angi in Whitby in 1986 and in 1990 we moved to Whitby permanently as I got a job with the Whitby based engineering company BC & T Consultants. The same year I took over the organisation of Whitby Folk Club which I’m still doing as I write this in 2022. In 1993 I became the Secretary of Whitby and District and Green Lane Allotments Society and in 1995 I formed Coblers Monday, Whitby’s Sea Song and Shanty Group. I recorded the song ‘The Drowned Sailor’ (From Stowbrow to Bay) on Coblers Monday’s 2001 cd , ‘Whitby Cured’.

Following a fall in 2016 I had to curtail some of my commitments and as I could no longer get up the 199 steps to my allotment I gave up my garden, and retired from allotment duties being the President at the time.

A lot of water has gone under Whitby Bridge since that first visit to the Black Horse nearly 60 years ago, and once it went over the bridge and drowned our car, but that’s a story for another day.

Although my mobility is impaired now, I can still manage to hobble the 252 paces from home to the Black Horse, where I can usually be found seated at the first table in the front bar, every Sunday lunchtime just after opening time at twelve o’ clock.

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