Story Category: Legacy

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

The revelation of the answer is today, 15th May, as it is Endangered Species Day.

That gives a clue as to what links three of these mammals – three of them are threatened from human activity.

Odd One Out?

So the animal which is not currently threatened with extinction is …drum roll please….

Number 3: the common squirrel monkey!

Common squirrel monkey at Singapore Zoo © Lee Ismail

Common squirrel monkeys are endemic to South America. Though once thought to be one species they have recently been split into three. They are not considered to be threatened and have even increased their range due to human activity, with escaped monkeys having established populations in Florida. When you are able to visit the Booth museum again, look out for the skeleton of the common squirrel monkey in the New World monkeys display.

Despite their conservation status, their Amazon habitat is under increased threat from logging and agriculture. They are also targeted for the pet trade, which has pushed many species around the world towards extinction. So their current status could change if we continue to exploit them.

Threatened with Extinction

The three other mammals are linked, as they are threatened with extinction from poaching, habitat loss and other pressures caused by humans. They are:

The Okapi (1) is native to the Congo jungle. It was unknown in the West until the 20th century. Specimens were so rare that F.W. Lucas (who’s collection makes up the Booth Museum’s bone collection) had to settle for a plaster cast of its skull. Though it has zebra stripes on its hind, it is most closely related to the giraffe. This is why it is also known as the forest giraffe.

Okapi, Dublin Zoo © Lee Ismail

Though they are protected under Congolese and international law, the instability of the region means that they suffer from high levels of illegal poaching and habitat loss from illegal mining and logging, as well as from legal commercial and residential developments.

Though zoos can be divisive, for species endemic to unstable regions, well managed conservation using zoos can be a vital lifeline to saving endangered species until their native range can be stabilised.

Red Pandas (2) are native to the Eastern Himalayan regions including Nepal, China and Bhutan. Like their namesake the giant panda, they mostly consume bamboo, but they are completely unrelated to giant pandas, which are bears. Red pandas are more closely related to raccoons.

Red Panda, Singapore Zoo © Lee Ismail

The Booth Museum holds a skin (processed from a zoo animal, who died naturally) and you can feel just how thick the fur is to keep the animal warm in its mountain environment. Sadly this is one of the reasons they are threatened as they are illegally hunted for their fur. They are also affected by habitat loss from other human activities, both legal and illegal. Conservation efforts in their natural range are supported by an extensive zoo based species survival plan over a global network of 254 institutions.

The Snow Leopard (4) is also found in the Himalayan region, living in mountainous terrain above the snowline. These big cats are vulnerable to extinction from a number of factors, but most significantly from poaching for skins as well as body parts for use in traditional medicine (once again this ‘medical’ use has no effect). Their habitat is also threatened from climate change – warming temperatures are pushing the tree line higher up the Himalayas and could see the snow leopard’s habitat shrink by 30%.

Snow leopard at Dublin Zoo © Lee Ismail

Local conservation is lead by members of the Global Snow Leopard Forum. They are supported by captive conservation breeding across zoos worldwide, with young bred successfully in a number of zoos, including the Highland Wildlife Park in Scotland, and Melbourne Zoo in Australia.

The Booth Museum received one of the snow leopards housed at Marwell zoo after it died, and the skeleton of that animal has now been mounted ready for future exhibition.

Though only three cute and appealing endangered mammals were chosen for this blog, there are currently over 31,000 species threatened with extinction.  Please consider helping your favourite conservation organisations, consider your day to day habits and behaviour, and pressure government and lawmakers into protecting wildlife more. Because conservation can bring species back from the brink with consistent effort and support.

Lee Ismail, Curator of Natural Sciences  

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

Our Royal Pavilion Garden Manager Robert has some more tips for the budding gardeners among us: 

• Watch out for late frosts and protect tender plants.
• Plant out summer bedding at the end of the month. Plant out Dahlia tubers and Cannas after risk of frost.
• As part of a lockdown routine, water early and late to get most out of your water, recycle water too. Then have a drink yourself!
• Prune spring shrubs eg Forsythia and Chaenomeles after flowering.
• Apply liquid feed to tulips and other spring bulbs to encourage a good display next year.
• Check Lilies for scarlet lily beetle and remove.

Dahlia © Lee Ismail

tulips © Lee Ismail

tulips closeup © Lee Ismail

lily © Lee Ismail

lily beetle © Lee Ismail

If you cannot obtain plants, substitute with seed you already have or buy online. I have just sown directly into pots, Nasturtiums, Nigella (love in the mist), Calendula, Californian poppy, night scented stock.

Likewise you could sow directly into window boxes. Spinach, Rocket, Coriander, Basil, Parsley and Chives.

sweet rocket © Lee Ismail

As an alternative to plants and seeds for the garden, why not try summer flowering bulbs to liven up your garden and pots etc. You can order now online from bulb specialists such as Bloms Blubs or Van Tubergen.

Here are a few suggestions for pots, baskets and window boxes:

Sparaxis (wonderful range of colours).

Freesias (Scent).

Ixias (African corn lily).

Begonias.

Gladioli Nanus mxd.

Begonia © Lee Ismail

For borders and beds:

Dahlias.

Gladioli Byzantinus (a great favourite of Gertrude Jekyll).

Eremurus.

Croscomia.

Lilies.

Local garden centre for compost.

Crocosmia lucifer in bloom © Lee Ismail

Crocosmia lucifer © Lee Ismail

dahlia in bloom © Lee Ismail

day lily © Lee Ismail

gladioli © Ismail Zulkifli

 Wash down with a huge Gin and tonic!

Discover More

Robert at work in the Royal Pavilion Garden

• Read more of Robert’s Gardening Tips  
• See more of the Nature at Home series

Robert Hill-Snook, Garden Manager, Lee Ismail, Curator of Natural Sciences 

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

Brighton alumni, Rachel Whiteread was the first woman to win the prestigious Turner Prize in 1993. Her work is described by Tate as ‘minimalism with a heart’.

Rachel Whiteread, from the series 100 First Women Portraits by Anita Corbin

Born in Ilford, London in 1963, Rachel Whiteread was influenced by her father’s fascination with urban architecture, whom she credits with enabling her to ‘look up.’ Her mother, an artist working at home, illustrated for Rachel the intersection of home and studio, life and art.

From 1982 to 1985 Rachel studied painting at Brighton Polytechnic, now the University of Brighton. She went onto study sculpture at the Slade School of Art in London. As a postgrad young artist, Rachel spoke of living hand-to-mouth. Creativity was provided through objects found on the street, at home or bought for next to nothing second-hand. Rachel explains, ‘they were things that were very much a part of my everyday life and language.’ An example of this are the casts of hot water bottles made during this period – an ordinary, everyday item, heightened to poetic understanding of the intimate and physical relationship between inanimate objects and humans.

The 1980s were marked by high levels of homelessness exemplified by Cardboard City at Waterloo, London. The artist said that the objects she worked with, ‘felt to me like lost human beings,’ that they had, ‘the presence of destitution and sorrow,’ which reflected the situation of homeless people.

Her project Untitled (House) is a response to the demolition of older London housing for redevelopment. For Rachel it highlighted the, ‘ludicrous policy of knocking down homes […] and building badly designed tower blocks which themselves have to be knocked down after twenty years.’ Untitled (House) was a life size cast of a condemned terraced house in the East End of London. It took Rachel and her assistants three months to create a concrete cast of the entire inside of the three-story building. So heavy was it, that it had to be exhibited at the original house location. The artist makes solid the space which we move around and inhabit that is invisible to the naked eye. The piece’s power was further amplified as it stood alone while the housing around it was demolished.

In poetic defiance, on the same day that the local authority finalised demolition of the work, after a heated debate to allow it to remain, Rachel Whiteread won the 1993 Turner Prize. She was the first woman to win this prestigious award, of which her portrait celebrates in Anita Corbin’s 100 First Women Portraits exhibition.

The sculpture was destroyed in January 1994, but the artist had made a significant impression on the art world. It has been stated [about Whiteread] that, ‘nothing remains, but the indelible impact on British art and sculpture going forward.’

In continuation of work created in public spaces, the Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial a.k.a. Nameless Library was unveiled in 2000 in Vienna. It is a cast of an inverted library. During the four-year process, the Holocaust was still not being taught in Austrian schools. The sculpture sits in a square in the city’s old Jewish ghetto. Art historian and scholar Whitney Chadwick states the large number of the memorial’s contents which are inaccessible reference the large number of Holocaust victims and their life stories, now absent, invisible and closed. Chadwick describes the work as a ‘counterweight to a long tradition of heroicizing monuments.’ Like Untitled (House), this sculpture acknowledges absences of humans and the intimate interaction with valued objects and spaces.

Rachel Whiteread was awarded a CBE in 2006 and in 2019 a Damehood in recognition to her continued services to art. Her work is held in many notable institution collections including; Tate, London, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York and the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.

Writer: Lisa Hinkins, MA Student, Museum Gallery Explainer and artist.

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

The Booth Museum has a question for you, how much do you know about mammals?

Here are four appealing mammal portraits. There are many similarities and differences, but three of them are linked specifically to each other. The other is not. Can you guess which one is the odd one out?

Odd One Out?

All images © Lee Ismail

Check back on Friday 15th May to see if you were right and learn about the animals.

Lee Ismail, Curator of Natural Sciences 

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

This month is the perfect time to keep an eye out for Swifts, Apus apus.

UK conservation status: Amber

The joy of May begins again, as swifts start screaming into our skies. They return from sub-Saharan Africa and stay only long enough to breed, making the return journey in August. Their Latin name means ‘without feet’, as they rarely land. They feed, mate and even sleep on the wing. The swift’s legs and feet are tiny and positioned very far back on the body, to make them more streamlined. When they do land, usually only when breeding, they have an ungainly shuffle as they move about the nest.

Why not come and have a look at the Booth Museum specimens once we reopen and compare them with any you’ve managed to photograph (or our sample images).

© Lee Ismail

Discover More

Read more from the Booth Museum on swifts

• Celebrate A Sky Full of Birds
• Celebrating World Migratory Bird Day with a Swift Sussex Nature Hero
• Exploring The Garden: Part 2, Birds and Mammals

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

Today we celebrate another incredible Sussex musician. One of the first and most successful women to make the most of the potential of recorded music was Southwick born, Dame Clara Butt (1872 – 1936). Dame Clara went on to become a world famous contralto singer with an extraordinary singing range whose performances could move audiences to tears and whose recordings won her millions of fans.

When, in the late nineteenth century Thomas Edison, and then Emile Berliner started to experiment with devices to record sound with phonograph cylinders, phonographs and gramophones, a revolution had started slowly to gather pace.  As the century progressed and the machines, particularly the gramophone, became more affordable, it meant that music lovers wouldn’t have to attend a concert to enjoy the art form, it could be there for anyone to listen to at home, easily, cheaply, and whenever they wanted  – maybe not yet at a flick of a switch but certainly with a little winding of a handle.  

The new technology didn’t only democratise the enjoyment of music, it meant musicians and artists could have international careers as their work reached more ears far and wide.  

Clara Butt, 1897

Dame Clara’s origins, however, as the daughter of an illiterate oyster fisherman who plied his trade in the River Adur were modest.  Dame Clara lived as a child in Adur Terrace, a long demolished street that the Southwick Society website situates ‘on the north side of the coast road between what is now Victoria Road (then a path across the fields) and Ann’s Place a short distance west of Grange Road with the houses looking out on the eastern arm of the river Adur….. currently a lorry park.’  Dame Clara’s father was from Jersey while her mother Clara Hook, came from a local Shoreham family.  The pair had married in Southwick’s St Michael’s Parish Church.    

The Butts didn’t stay in Southwick long.   When Dame Clara was a child, the family moved first to Jersey, then Bristol where she attended school.  Her singing talent was quickly recognised and in 1890 she won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music with the local community clubbing together to support her training.  Dame Clara’s professional debut came when she was still a student in December 1892 at the Royal Albert Hall in Sullivan’s cantata, ‘The Golden Legend’.   

Clara Butt & Kenerly Rumford

From then, Dame Clara’s career took off rapidly with George Bernard Shaw, then a music critic, describing one of her performances as having ‘far surpassed the utmost expectations that could reasonably be entertained’, and Britain’s foremost composer of the day, Sir Edward Elgar, composing works especially for her to sing.  Her recordings reached the ears of millions of people worldwide and Dame Clara toured Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, and the USA, the first international star to go on tour as we understand it today.  In 1900, such was her fame that, when she married the baritone Kennerley Rumford in Bristol Cathedral, crowds flocked to line the route, special trains were run from London, and a half-day holiday given to workers.   

At six feet two inches tall, and always appearing in immaculate gowns and jewellery, Dame Clara understood the importance of portraying a striking image and was a commanding stage presence who could hold audiences in the palm of her hand.  Even today, just looking at the sleeves of her gramophone records where she towers out like a great statue with a cool, confident gaze directly at the camera gives an indication of the thrill audiences must have felt watching her perform.   

These days Dame Clara is best remembered for her performances of ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, which became her signature song.  With music by Elgar and words added later by A. C. Benson, Dame Clara was the first to perform the work in 1902 and later claimed that she gave Elgar the idea for the words.  Her gutsy performances – the conductor, Sir Thomas Beecham once quipped that when she sang it in the Royal Albert Hall, people in Calais would hear – earned her the title of ‘Voice of the Empire’ and came to stand for an Edwardian pre-First World War England who, with a huge empire and booming economy, saw itself in its prime.   It was said that when she recorded the song it sold so rapidly that there wasn’t a gramophone in the whole of England without a copy of her record lying beside it.    

 Later, she would give spirited performances of the song to rally morale and boost hope during the First World War, mostly for war charities, for which she raised the enormous sum of £100,000 and was subsequently awarded a DBE.    

At the peak of her success, Dame Clara didn’t forget her Sussex roots.  In 1903 she bought a luxury apartment in St Aubyns Mansions on the Hove seafront, at the time the nearest residential block to the sea.  She lived here until 1906.   

Just over one hundred years later a blue plaque was erected on the building, financed by the residents of St Aubyn’s Mansions with support from the Brighton and Hove Commemorative Plaques Panel.  Uniquely, the building holds two blue plaques for women as another towering presence of Edwardian entertainment, the male impersonator and music hall star, Vesta Tilley, also lived in the building, although several years later than Dame Clara.   

Sadly, in spite of Dame Clara’s dazzling career and great service to others, her life wasn’t without tragedy.  Two of her three children died before her, one of meningitis while still at school and the other of suicide.  During the 1920s, she became seriously ill with cancer of the spine, although she still worked and recorded.  

The fans of Dame Clara Butt are still many and today she’s regarded as a cultural icon of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras.  As an early star of recorded music she was one of the first people who, able to reach out to a wider listenership than ever before, laid down the template of the modern music star as we know it.   

 Written by social historian, Louise Peskett

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

This week Beth has chosen a Royal Pavilion theme with golden dragons, strutting peacocks and Chinese designs for you to draw. Take a look and see.

Beth

Draw Artists

We are very pleased to see that some of you have taken part in our online Mid-Week Draw, here are some of the fantastic works that have been sent in.

Geri

Ann

Ossie

Join In

If you are tempted to have a go, please share your drawings with us, we would love to see them. Email them to Beth at beth.burr@brighton-hove.gov.uk 

Tweet @BrightonMuseums or if you are uploading them to Facebook with pride, share the url in the comments section below.

Come back next Wednesday to see what new objects Beth has chosen.

A few other drawing ideas:

• Draw a scene from a dream you’ve had
• Get a handful of utensils and toss them on the table. Draw them as they land
• Items in your fridge – Close your eyes and reach in. Sketch whatever you pull out

Discover More

The Mid-Week Draw

Beth Burr, Museum Support Officer

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

For much of my life I’ve been an avid gamer and this is something that is currently really helping me to get through the current lockdown situation the UK.

I enjoy gaming for its escapism and I love becoming invested in a story; it stimulates my imagination and problem solving and is fun at the same time. Whilst working from home and with our heightened focus on digital content, I wanted to research some well-known and personal favourite games, characters and creatures and see how they relate to real objects from our vast collections. These links may reflect real-life inspiration for the digital creation, sharing of meaning or symbolism or other interesting and intriguing tidbits of information I find.

Animal Crossing and the Booth Museum

To kick off, I wanted to focus on a game that a huge proportion of gamers across the world are playing currently and one you most likely will have at least seen on social media if you’ve looked there at all over the last few weeks. Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons! This relaxing game which involves moving to a deserted island and creating a thriving community of friendly animal villagers couldn’t have come at a better time, providing a space for calm, gentle escapism. One of the main focuses of this game from the very start is actually populating a museum with the huge number of fish, insects and fossils that can be found on the island, with varying ones found depending on the time of year (the game mirrors our real-time days, months, seasons). It feels almost like curating your very own Booth Museum, minus the shooting and collecting of birds that our Mr Booth was so fond of in the 1800’s. The Booth Museum’s collection includes a number of specimens also found in Animal Crossing, including wasps, butterflies and moths, spiders and dinosaur fossils! We don’t have any staff quite like Animal Crossing’s Blathers though…

Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ museum

Booth Museum interior featuring some collection displays

Dark Souls’ Moonlight Butterfly

On the subject of insects, let’s look at the Moonlight Butterfly from one of my personal favourite game series – Dark Souls. Contrary to almost all other bosses in these games, the Moonlight Butterfly isn’t really known as being especially difficult to beat, but is certainly one of the most beautifully designed aesthetically. Butterflies are ectotherms, which means that they rely on external heat sources and aren’t able to generate body heat themselves, which is why you see so many of them basking in the sunshine on a warm summer day. As this basking is vital to the butterfly’s survival it needs a way to deal with attention from potential predators whilst it raises it’s body temperature – this is why butterflies have the variety of patterns on the wings that they do. It may be to help them blend in to their environment when their wings are spread or to scare or confuse anything that may want to eat them. The Moonlight Butterfly from Dark Souls is a kind of antithesis to our real-life butterflies – it lives in the Darkroot Garden, with little access to light and yet radiates a glorious green glow and heat rather than soaking it in. It is also the largest and most powerful creature in the area, possibly a predator rather than the prey.

Moonlight Butterfly from Dark Souls

 Butterfly from Booth Museum collection.

Dragons

Now to move on to mythical beasts: Dragons! Anyone who has been to the Royal Pavilion before will have surely noticed the huge number of dragons in its interior. They are featured in sculptures, painted on to wallpaper, carved in to furniture and can even be spotted in the faux wood grain on some of the panelling. Dragons have appeared in folklore and myth from across the world for thousands of years, as far back as 4000BC in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. From Hebrew’s Leviathan to Fafnir from Norse mythology and the Wyvern and Hydra from ancient Greece – It’s no wonder they’re so widely recognised now and are probably the most visible of any mythical creature, being featured in a huge amount of pop culture. They also play a key role in a couple of my favourite games: as main characters Angelus and Mikhail in the Drakengard and Nier series created by the dark-storytelling mastermind Yoko Taro and Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim features many dragons both friendly and hostile. You can also find them in the Dragon Age games, Legend of Zelda, Fire Emblem, Call of Duty, Monster Hunter, Tomb Raider and of course, the Spyro series, to name just a few.
Angelus the Red Dragon, heroine of the 2003 game Drakengard which later spawned the Nier franchise.

 Dragon holding up the chandelier in the Royal Pavilion’s banqueting room.

Pyramid Head and representations of death

Pyramid Head from Silent Hill 2 is probably one of the most well known antagonists in gaming, along with being one of the most dread-inducing. Similarly to Mr. X from Resident Evil 2 and Nemesis from Resident Evil 3, Pyramid Head appears at several points in the game with the sole purpose of hunting your character down and making you (as the gamer) fall to pieces in panic. Masahiro Ito is the designer of this particular subject, his aim was to make Pyramid Head as disturbing as possible – the juxtaposition of mechanical and humanoid, metal and flesh. The huge industrial metal helmet that covers the entire head and face of Pyramid Head appears painful and torturous to wear; his obvious strength and huge blade make him a formidable opponent as well as an intriguing manifestation of the main character’s guilt and a punishment for his actions against his wife Mary. Representations of death in art and other media often have religious links, as does Pyramid Head within the Silent Hill storyline; a number of objects in our museums’ collections also have this similar theme.

This piece by Albrecht Durer entitled Knight, Death and the Devil (1513)  from the fine art collection shows a Christian knight riding past figures of Death and the Devil.

 In The Ride of Death, by Stefano della Bella (1648) the representation of death is much more literal, but this is another example where it’s used to symbolise violence, threat and horror.

Pyramid Head illustration by Ito

Unusual Creatures

Our real world flora and fauna is obviously a huge inspiration for game designers and for this final section I wanted to look more specifically at new creations which seem to be an amalgamation of a number of real animals. The latest game from Sony’s Team Ico, The Last Guardian, features a huge creature named Trico as one of its two main characters. In the game you are not able to control Trico directly but you must interact with him and your environment (as an unnamed boy) in order to progress through the game. To enable Trico to assist the player in a wide variety of scenarios within the game’s narrative the developers made it up of a number of creatures, making it seemingly half bird, half-mammal. This gives it a sense of familiarity to us and allows us to develop empathy for both Trico and the boy. Some other examples of hybrid creatures in games include Carbuncle from Final Fantasy VIII which appears as a mystical rodent; Guardian of the Talion from Tomb Raider 2 – a human/bird hybrid and Echidna from Devil May Cry 4 which hybridises human and plant forms. We even have a merman on display at the Booth Museum. This strange object from our collection is actually a victorian con – people would construct these fabrications using parts of other animals in order to trick people out of money, persuading them that they had a genuine merman! Even in this case, though its intentions are very different, it shows how people enjoy being enticed by,  and revelling in the fantastical.

 Trico from The Last Guardian

Merman from the Booth Museum’s collection

By Rob White, Marketing Officer, Royal Pavilion & Museums

Image references

Animal Crossing – Nintendo – Museum image – http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2020/04/a_real-life_aquarium_is_streaming_educational_tours_of_animal_crossing_new_horizons_museum

Dark Souls – From Software & Bandai Namco – Moonlight Butterfly image – https://darksouls.wiki.fextralife.com/Moonlight+Butterfly

Drakengard – Square Enix – Angelus image – https://drakengard.fandom.com/wiki/Angelus

Silent Hill 2 – Konami – Pyramid Head image – https://silenthill.fandom.com/wiki/Pyramid_Head

The Last Guardian – Sony – Trico image – https://teamico.fandom.com/wiki/Trico

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

Our conservation team have been looking at a sample of our barkcloth in preparation for some exciting workshops later this year (postponed from this Spring). 

Barkcloth

Barkcloth is a non-woven cloth made from the inner bark of certain trees and flowering plants, it was used throughout Oceania, central Africa and other areas of the tropics. Barkcloth had enormous social and spiritual significance and always belonged to women. It was often used as clothing, soft furnishing, room dividers and many other functions up to the 20th century.

Barkcloth is still culturally important and highly prized and continues to be produced today. 

To make it, the inner bark is stripped and soaked to soften and then beaten with wooden mallets to stretch and widen it into the cloth. The result is a surprisingly soft and strong material which is then dyed and decorated with hand-painted, rubbed, printed or stencilled designs. 

The planned workshops have given us a brilliant opportunity to take a look at these wonderful items in our collection. As they are essentially paper (made of beaten bark), they fall under the remit of paper conservation. As the in-house paper conservator my task will be to gently unfold, clean and make small repairs where necessary and plan some new spacious storage of the items. We will also get the chance to do a little more research and take some better photographs, so watch this space!

Amy Junker Heslip, Paper Conservator

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

In celebration and recognition of what would have been the start of this year’s Great Escape music festival in Brighton, today’s pioneering woman of Sussex blog puts the spotlight on Shirley Collins, the so-called ‘first lady of folk’.

Shirley Collins, image courtesy of Brian Shuel

When Hastings-born Shirley Collins MBE (b 1935) released the album ‘Lodestar’ in 2016 it was her first release for 38 years and a happy day not just for fans of folk music but anyone interested in the traditional songs and folklore of Sussex, which Collins has always championed in her work.  The album, recorded at home in her cottage in Lewes, won universal plaudits and two BBC Radio Two Folk Awards.  It was a remarkable return for a woman who penetrated the predominantly male domain of the folk music scene of the late 1950s and ‘60s, became a major figure in its revival and development, and changed its landscape with her innovative use of instruments and styles before abruptly dropping out and disappearing from view in 1979. 

Collins’ interest in music began as a child growing up in working class Hastings with a music loving family who were interested in the songs of old Sussex.  Collins credits her grandfather and mother’s sister, Aunt Grace, as kindling her and her sister, Dolly’s fascination with traditional songs passed down orally from generation to generation.    

Leaving school at seventeen, Collins abandoned teacher training to pursue her interest in the kind of traditional rural and working class music that came to be known as ‘folk’.  She was soon immersing herself in the blossoming of interest in the form, now termed the ‘English folk revival’ where she formed a rare female presence in a scene described more recently by Billy Bragg as ‘beery and beirdy’.  With her unaffected singing voice and Sussex accent, and her approach outlined in her recent memoir ‘All in the Downs’ (2018) of ‘No dramatising a song, no selling it to an audience, no overdecorating in a way that was alien to English songs, and most of all, singing to people, not at them.’ she soon found herself at the epicentre of the movement.  Her first recording was the old English song ‘Dabbling in the Dew’ for the landmark ‘Folk Songs Today’ compilation in 1955, and in 1959 she recorded her first album as a solo artiste.  ‘Sweet England’ is a collection of love songs and ballads from southern England, some with no accompaniment, others with banjo or guitar.  Many of her songs were sung from a woman’s point of view and explored the experience of women in a rural environment.  In her memoir she writes ‘whenever I sang I felt the old singers standing behind me and I wanted to be the conduit for them, for their spirit, these people who’d kept the songs alive.’ 

During this year she also accompanied Alan Lomax, American folklorist and song collector, on a song collecting trip around the Southern States of the USA.  Visiting prisons, chain gangs, churches, and social gatherings, they discovered songs that were about to become lost and discovered a number of musicians, who later found fame.   

Collins went on to record many further albums, her innovative approach, introducing jazz-folk fusion on 1964’s ‘Folk Routes, New Routes’, for example, developed and diversified the appeal of the burgeoning genre of folk.  She often recorded with her sister, Dolly, who accompanied her on the portative organ and arranged the music.  The 1969 ‘Anthems of Eden’, featuring a suite of songs about the changes in rural England brought by the First World War, is considered a game-changing moment in English folk for its unusual combination of traditional instruments such as rebecs, sackbuts, viols and crumhorns, which proved that the guitar didn’t always have prevail.  Many critics pinpoint this work as opening the door to big-name bands such as Steeleye Span and Fairport Convention.   

With her second husband Ashley Hutchings, and based in the East Sussex village of Etchingham, Collins then formed the Etchingham Steam Band.  Preferring acoustic largely due to the lack of electricity during the three-day-week, the band’s repertoire drew on the traditional music of Sussex and became fixtures on the folk club and festival scene.   

Sadly, 1979’s single ‘The Mariner’s Farewell’ recorded with Bert Jansch was the last time her many fans got to hear Shirley Collins’ voice.  Following a painful divorce, Collins lost her voice and retired from music completely.  Getting rid of all of her musical equipment, Collins got jobs which signalled a total break with her past, including spells in the British Library and the job centre.   

It wasn’t until 2014 when, aged 78, she accepted an invitation to sing an unadvertised slot in the Union Chapel, Islington for the band Current 93 that she appeared on stage for the first time since the 1970s.  The new material of ‘Lodestar’ created a resurgence in interest and is reaching a new generation of new fans who, after the manufactured polish of much of the twenty-first century’s music, lap up the authenticity and simplicity of Collins’ work.  In 2017 a film about her life ‘The Ballad of Shirley Collins’ was released.  Collins has been given many awards, including a Gold Badge from the English Folk Dance and Song Society, an organisation of which she became president four years later, an MBE for services to music in the 2007 New Year’s Honours List and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Sussex.  She continues to be, not only a cultural treasure giving pleasure to millions with her music, but, like Rottingdean’s folklorist Bob Copper, a crucial key in preserving the heritage of Sussex through its songs.   

Written by social historian, Louise Peskett