We've been researching the Rushbearing festival of Rochdale with help from our new friends over in Sowerby Bridge, including Garry Stringfellow, a world expert in the tradition. He sent this through to us:
The Illustration on this page shows a pack sheet made by some of the lads in the Dyeing Department of Messrs. John Bright & Brothers Ltd., Rochdale, and thereby hangs a tale of a very old Custom. The Rochdale holidays are still called “Rushbearing,” although the annual ceremony of rush-bearing has fallen into disusage. Robertson in his “Guide to Rochdale,” states that it originated in the time of Pope Gregory IV. (A.D. 827). Rush-carts were skilfully built in a conical shape rising to a sharp ridge at the top, and at the top was a bower in the form of a crown, made of holly, laurel and other evergreens, round which were twined garlands of the gayest flowers. About thirty young men, with white smocks adorned with gaudy ribbons, and with floral wreathes, were yoked on couples. Each couple held a stave fastened to the ropes attached to the cart shafts, and at intervals the young men engaged in a morris dance. Rush-cart generally came from the neighbouring villages to the towns, and fights of a desperate character used often to take place between the owners of rival rush-carts. Of late years rush-carts have not often made their appearance in Rochdale, and it would seem that the custom is dying out. In ancient times the ceremony used to terminate at the Parish Church, and the rushes were spread on the floor under the benches, to serve as a comfortable winter carpet, and there they remained until the arrival of warmer weather. But within the last forty years the Church is the last place thought of in this festival, which has degenerated into a rustic saturnalia. The Rush-cart banner was always a most conspicuous object in the public procession of the carts. Great taste and large expense were usually bestowed on this gorgeous and indispensible adjunct, which was raised on stout poles and carried by two or more men in front of the cart. Although the rush-cart is now rarely seen, the rush-cart banner has survived and it is this banner, or Pack Sheet, which is shown in the illustration. A glance at the picture in simple black and white conveys a poor impression of the really artistic and harmonious blending of the beautiful colours on the Pack Sheet. Even, however, from the figure arrangements, one can see a possibility of design, which, marked out in the great variety of materials and colours employed, went to make up this example, possibly the most beautiful Pack Sheet ever arranged in the spare moments of dye and bleach-house boys since this old-time custom began. The boys are allowed, at this period, a somewhat free hand in selection, to accumulate the decorative examples they require for the Sheet. It would therefore, be surprising if Messrs. John Bright and Brothers Ltd. dye-room boys failed to put out a good Pack Sheet, since they have the choice from a wide range of materials and colours. On the Sheet was to be seen examples of bundle and warp-dyed cotton yarns, mercerised yarns, artificial silk, worsted, linen and jute yarns. These, coloured with practically every variety of dye-stuffs at present employed, will indicate the almost unlimited choice of examples the boys could pick from.
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So, better late than never we decided it would be useful to cut a wee promo vid of the project to better introduce it to the kinds of folks we’ll need on board in the months ahead. To this very end we spent yesterday with our ace film maker Sally interviewing all our key partners and collaborators. We asked them to sum up what the story of cotton famine road means to them, we got some brilliant and inspiring responses. From the centre of town we went up to Rooley Moor Road once more, and got the same sensation we do every time we go up there, the sense that big history was unfolding in minute back breaking steps on that windswept moorland as huge stones were quarried, cut and shaped into setts, then carted all the way up to the top to be laid – all by weaving folks who had never done such back breaking work before.
In other news, ok so whisper it quietly but we have a Draft One script! A pungent and powerful concoction of first hand verbatim source material, and lively character based drama. We want our stage play to give voice to those who are not in any recorded histories of this story, it’s got a way to go but there’s a lot in it. We want it to centre on people in the streets and back closes, the mill workers and their families who suffered when the cotton was stopped, the mill gates slammed shut and the hunger bit deep and hard into the spirit and resolve of these people. Our respect for them only grows stronger the more we look into this. And what’s more our promo vid will be available to view soon! Things gathering pace with partners and creative conversations happening all the time now, like with the brilliant Parvez Qadir. Rochdale to his boots, Parvez is doing some brilliant but also very challenging and thought provoking drama and video art with young people, developing his own practice, and broadening his skills and approach. Hearing his thoughts and responses to this project, knowing that he is with us fills me with hope that we can have a profound and transformative impact on the town and young people especially.
Likewise with Ellie Kelly, a young Rochdalian who is working with us on the project and learning a whole range of producing and development skills on the way. Her passion and pride in her hometown was something I felt first hand during the It’s In The Blood rugby league project where I first met her. In fact it was after that piece ended that Ellie spoke about Cotton Famine Road, said come and do a project on this! Well, it took a while but here we are. And then just lately we went to meet Mary at the Rochdale Nigerian Community Association and also Nikki at Caring & Sharing, two amazing ladies who exemplify this rich and diverse town. The story of the road was complete news to both Mary and Nikki, so it was lovely to see them so inspired by it, and enthusiastic to be part of it. The conversations about how we can bring their creative forces and voices into the process is just one more revelatory uplifting beat on this journey, as step by step we lay the foundations for our own epic journey. That everyone we speak to in the town sees the potential of this project, and is so fully behind it is really humbling. It is people such as these, whose town and heritage this is, that inspire me to make this project live up to it’s huge potential. One of the most rewarding aspects of this process has been sharing the story, our ideas, and looking for ways to collaborate with other creatives, none more so than the brilliant choreographer Gary Clarke! Gary worked with us on The Northern School in Bradford a few years ago and we are delighted he will be not only working with us but undertaking a residency in Rochdale. If you haven’t seen Gary’s work do so first chance you get, Coal and Wasteland are two of the finest pieces of work we’ve seen in the last 10 years. Anyway, a few weeks ago we took Gary up onto the moors, after all what better place to talk ideas, visions, possibilities and plans for this project than the cotton famine road itself? It was a beautiful day in the middle of lockdown, as we walked and talked so ideas came into focus. We asked ourselves how might we link this lonely spot way up on the hills to the centre of the town below? How could dance and movement capture the story we want to tell? The epic struggle of a town, of a class of people to maintain their dignity, nay their lives even, in the face of starvation – and for a principle that they believed in. And just as we thought about the people of 1863 who must have toiled and broke their backs in all weathers to lay that road, to feed their loved ones, so pictures, images, ideas for motion and physical storytelling began to percolate. As the day went on it came to us all just how much working class people at the time of the cotton famine had to endure in their hard and very often short lives for our generations to have things better. By the end of the day we were talking processions, projections, school and community dance projects, a residency with Gary and his core team of ( brilliant) dancers in Rochdale for the duration of the project. It was a good day, and there will be more to follow…
We are now well into our R&D process, delving into archive research scouring the internet and piling up an ever taller mountain of books. These are on subjects from the poetry and songs of old Lancashire, the writings of 19th century figures like Edwin Waugh or the novels of Ethel Carnie that tell of working class life in the mill towns. Reading the accounts of Rochdalians of the time and their recollections of the hunger and suffering the people endured is very powerful. So too are the eloquent and moving autobiographies of Frederick Douglass, I’ve also been delving into Sirpa Salenius brilliant biography of Sarah Parker Remond.
Unlike Douglass Sarah was never a slave, though she faced chronic racism her whole life. However just like Douglass, she came here to the UK in the years before the US civil war, she spoke to packed halls Manchester – an incredible and very rare thing for a black woman to be able to do at the time. She spoke very warmly of her time here. But pushing three million Lancastrians depended on the cotton industry for a living one way or another. It’s complete closure was a devastating blow, hunger is an awful thing. So it’s probably scarce wonder that we find a very mixed and nuanced picture of who and where support for the blockade and the North in the civil war was strongest. More to come… Cotton Famine Rd… a lonely stone track on the moors above Rochdale. You’d be forgiven for thinking it a road to nowhere since it just stops midway across the moor! But you’d be wrong, because it goes right back into our shared history, and it reaches right across the world, to cotton fields of the American South. It tells of Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade, of the millions that were made by merchants here out of that misery. And ultimately it tells us how the weavers of Rochdale played their small part, and suffered hugely, in bringing it to an end.
It came about as a result of public subscription in 1863, deep in the midst of the cotton famine of 1861-65 when the southern ports were blockaded and the mills of the Lancashire were starved of raw materials. As the blockade began to bite the mills went form short time working to complete shutdown – and the weavers were thrown into penury and starvation. But for all this at a meeting in Manchester in December in 1862 all threw their full support behind the blockade, and the Union cause in the American Civil war, the fight to end slavery. Stand up on it and you can see for miles. You can see a big picture, one of people uniting in common sacrifice for something that mattered more – principle. |
AuthorMick Martin is a writer and theatre maker. Archives
April 2022
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