The Festival of Village Carols

Saturday 3 December 2022

Grenoside Community Centre, 9.30am – 11.00pm (Grand Sing, 7.30pm)

Guest Groups

The founders of Glen Rock Carolers from York County, Pennsylvania, were among a group of families that emigrated from the Micklehurst district on the Lancashire/Cheshire/Derbyshire border between 1832 and 1850.

The first of these was William Heathcote, who saw the potential for a water-powered woollen mill in the Codorus Creek. Other industries quickly developed and with the opening of Susquehanna Railroad the settlement of Glen Rock was established. The carolers first outing was in 1848 when four singers and a bassoon player sang carols around their neighbourhood, mostly German farmsteads. The bedrock of their repertoire was and is four carols they had brought over from their home country. The carolers flourished year by year and have kept records of their outings ever since. Led by Darryl Engler, the present group boasts a strong active membership and sings with great spirit. This will be their third visit to Sheffield..

The Festival of Village Carols is a celebration of the remarkable carol singing traditions that flourish in the villages around Sheffield and beyond. Our aim is to help participants learn the vocal and instrumental parts of some of the local carols at workshops during the day. These are performed by everyone at the Grand Sing when there is also the opportunity to hear each of the guest groups perform carols from their own tradition.

Of the carols that have been chosen for the workshops, several are from Worrall and district, where there existed, until the 1970s, a tradition of stringed instrumental accompaniment. The parts are transcribed from family manuscripts as used by the legendary ‘Big Set’, the name given to the local carol party, who toured Bradfield, Loxley, Wadsley, Worrall, and Oughtibridge every Christmas Day and Boxing Day, up until the Second World War. The accompaniments together with the ‘symphonies’ capture the intricate and exciting music, both sacred and secular, that village bands created in the late eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries.

Carols for all to sing

Two carols from the Netherton tradition near Huddersfield: Wooldale and Hear Ye Now. Three Derbyshire carols: Joy to the World, All in the Morning (solo), and Peace o’er the World.

Plus the well-known favourites: Awake Arise Good Christians, New Christians, Universal King, How Beautiful upon the Mountains, Mount Olive, Mount Zion, Mistletoe Bough (solo), Old Foster, Jacob’s Well, Star of Bethlehem, and Merry Christmas.

With the exception of the two Netherton carols, all the other carols are included in either The Sheffield Book of Village Carols or The Derbyshire Book of Village Carols. Copies are available here http://www.villagecarols.org.uk/publications/index.html