The Music

Much of our music is taken from the Lincolnshire Collection,tunes from a variety of sources,collected in Tealby (Lincolnshire) between 1823-1826 by Joshua Gibbons a papermaker.

According to the Scunthorpe museum, they were presented with the Joshua Gibbons Manuscript along with a copy of the Market Rasen Weekly Mail and a silver handled whale-bone paper knife in 1963 by Mrs K. Parker of 2 Portman Road, Scunthorpe. In 1969 it was noticed on a piano music stand at Normanby Hall (where the museum was based) by Sue Cave who had gone there with the Grimsby and District Youth Orchestra to play in a concert. She was developing a keen interest in traditional music through her work with the Grimsby-based folk groups "The Meggies" and ''The Broadside". She asked if she could borrow the manuscript and permission was given. The members of the group realised the importance of the discovery and some tunes were quickly learnt, and over the following 25 years some local and not-so-local musicians obtained copies of the original. Perhaps because of the cramped nature of the presentation of most of the tunes, many were not taken up and played. Dr Robert Pacey's 1976 transcription of the manuscript made the tunes more accessible to those who knew, but for most people it has remained an unknown treasure in Lincolnshire's traditional musical history.