Easter on Shipley Glen

[Colin Nicholson]

Hi everyone,
I would like to share a project that I have been asked to become involved in with a local heritage.
A silent film has been recently discovered "The Wrecked Helter Skelter" 1912, showing original footage in B&W, with no sound. It shows scenes of a wooden roller coaster, donkey rides and a steam boat passing by, and much more.

Today I visited a local Shipley Counsellor Eddie Lawler (singer & song writer) who is very passionate about "local history" regarding pit closures, scrap yard closures local anecdotes etc.... and writes songs about them.... this is his latest project.

We want to try and provide a musical backing to this short film, and Eddie came up with song "Meet Me Gwen on Shipley Glen" .... composed by Jimmy Sutton, around 1900. Eddie will sing the lyrics. The music score was very feint and difficult to read, however I have sort of managed to transcribe it. It was originally in F major, and has been transposed down a tone to E flat major for Eddie to reach the top notes easier.

I will also shortly be mis-tuning an old upright piano to make it sound honky tonk style for the period. At first, we want to carry out some short rehearsals for voice and piano, then get it professionally recorded to back this film.

Here at>> http://www.yorkshirefilmarchive.com/fil ... -glen-1912

If anyone is from the Shipley/ Yorkshire area, you may remember someone visiting the fun fair back in 1912/ knowing the area, or even have grand parents who remembered / photos etc? Any additional anecdotes or suggestions/ song titles/ etc. would be gratefully received.
We hope to start a pre-recording in about 4 weeks.

Colin

[chrisw]

Colin,
My family came from south Leeds rather than north west Bradford so I doubt if we will have any information regarding the fun fair at Shipley. In our area we did however have an annual horse fair (still in existence) and at one time small fun fair. This fair goes back hundreds of years under the name of Lee Gap fair. There are various articles on the web regarding Lee Gap and there is also a photograph taken in 1908 on the day of the fair which comes up if you care to search Lee Gap Fair Google images. Unfortunately the photograph shows a scene down a neighbouring road rather than the fair itself.

[MareenKing]

WOW, good luck, guys, in this!