William Harding at The Lamb Inn, Urchfont in 1978 Part 3 of 4

Stained Glass from St Nicholas in Wilsford

In 1978 I spent some time travelling around Berkshire and Wiltshire in the company of fellow folklorist Roly Brown. We were primarily looking for people who remembered folksongs, songs that they had learnt from their parents or grandparents. One lunchtime we called at The Lamb Inn in Urchfont, Wiltshire, where we met William Harding, who not only agreed to sing to us, but who also gave us a dialect poem and a reminiscence of a band that had once played in the village of Potterne.  I have always regretted that William’s recordings have remained unpublished in my collection and am happy that they can now be heard by all. 

                                                                                    Mike Yates. October, 2011

The Potterne Band

The village of Potterne lies in the centre of Wiltshire, just to the south of Devizes, and has around one and a half thousand inhabitants. In the late 1800’s the village had a Temperance band, though I suspect that this is not the band described by William in this short narration.