Green Lane

This song was collected by A.E. (Tony) Green from Mrs Lily Hill, wife of Castleford Pit Pony Driver Bill Hill. He obtained the song from her while he was in the process of recording Bill singing the Castleford Pony Driving Song.

Mrs Hill said she learnt the song from the older women in a rag-picking shop where she worked in her teens.

In the Heavy Woollen District of Yorkshire, many women were employed as rag pickers in the local mills. These women were highly skilled at quickly sorting and grading both old and new rags, so they could be reprocessed into the useable materials Shoddy and Mungo.

The ‘Rag Hoils’ as the mills were known locally, sourced their old rags from rag and bone men, and new ones were bought as scrap from clothing manufacturers and tailors. The woollen rags were used to make shoddy, and the worsted rags, Mungo. Any cotton rags were used to make paper.