Annotation:Peckhover Walk Hornpipe
Back to Peckhover Walk Hornpipe
PECKHOVER WALK HORNPIPE. AKA and see "China Orange Hornpipe," "Fisher's Hornpipe." English, Hornpipe. England, Yorkshire. D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The tune is a variant of the well-known "Fisher's Hornpipe." Peckover Walk (note spelling) is a street in the town of Bradford, west Yorkshire, England, near Leeds. Around the time Leadley was compiling his manuscript the street and environs were home to a great many workers in the wool trade, which had expanded greatly in the first forty years of the 19th century. At one time the family-centered work provided a steady living, but conditions deteriorated, until, in the 1840's they became so intolerable as to generate labor unrest. The woolcombers rallied in May, 1845, on Peckover Walk to protest for better wages and constant employment, and improved work conditions, and succeeded in having a commission appointed to investigate their sanitary conditions. John James, in Continuation & additions to the History of Bradford (1866) recorded:
In the report published by them, they state that there were in town and neighbourhood 10,000 woolcombers, the greater part of whome were compelled to make workshops of their sleeping apartments. The report is a heart-sickening statement of the sufferings of these men. The wealthy inhabitants subscribed liberally to relieve the distress, but happily soon after this date, combing machines began to be used, and the combers were gradually drafted into the weaving sheds and merchants' warehouses, where there had grown an increasing demand for labour, whist a large number of them were assisted to emigrate.
'Assisted' emigration, and transfer of work from home to factories and warehouses may not have seemed the happy solution for the workers as it seems to have been for Mr. James.
Source for notated version: a music manuscript collection by fiddler Lawrence Leadley, 1827-1897 (Helperby, north Yorkshire) [Merryweather & Seattle].
Printed sources: Merryweather & Seattle (The Fiddler of Helperby), 1994; No. 20, p. 33.
Recorded sources: