Bridge Folk Club

Bridge Folk Club Open Mondays except Bank Holidays

Doors at 7.00 and the music starts at 7.30. Get our weekly update - send your email details to [email protected]

07/09/2026

Milton Hide at The Bridge Folk Club18 May 2026

Judge, Jury And Executioner (Written by Milton Hide)

Milton Hide are Jim Tipler and Jo Church. They took the name for their duo from the Milton Hide Wood, a corner of the lovely Wilmington Forest in Sussex, England

Judge, Jury And Executioner was inspired by a dispute between the British media personalities Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney. In 2022 it culminated in a libel case in the High Court and the publicity they were given seemed to take over all of the English news channels. A lot of the supposedly unbiased reports appeared to be aimed at encouraging viewers to dislike both of the women. Milton Hide reflected that it’s so easy to be drawn along and convinced by the presentations we see, regardless of how obviously they might be manipulating us. It’s a valid point; maybe we should take a step back more often and think things through a tad more carefully before we become judges, juries and executioners

This song is on Milton Hide’s ‘Bungaroosh’ album. To enjoy more of their music go to –
https://www.miltonhide.com/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMtukY6fTBtAmAu1xtq0-4A
https://miltonhide.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/miltonhide
https://www.instagram.com/milton_hide/

06/09/2026

Allan Perks at The Bridge Folk Club, 22 June 2026

The Ballad Of William Bloat (Raymond Calvert)

This charming little ballad is set in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The Shankhill Road is a traditionally Protestant area of Belfast, which explains why William Bloat ‘cursed the Pope’ in the third verse

06/09/2026

Lily Rintoul at The Bridge Folk Club, 11 May 2026

Blackleg Miner (Trad)

This was collected by A L Lloyd from W Swampey of Bishop Auckland, northeast England, in 1949. It is about a bitter strike in the northeast of England in 1844. Coal owners brought workers from other areas to act as strikebreakers, often bringing them from Wales, Ireland and Cornwall. Many families in Seaton Delaval (Northumberland) were evicted to provide homes for Cornish blackleg workers and there was a saying in Delaval ‘There’s no good luck in a Cornishman’

Blacklegs caught by strikers might be stripped and their clothes and tools thrown down the pit shaft. In the darkness of the pits, ropes might be stretched across the underground roadway to catch non-union men by the throat as they rode along on tubs

The word blackleg has at least two possible derivations –
• It has been said that the Cornishmen wore black trousers
• Miners wore short trousers at work so anyone out of the mine with coal-blackened legs would be identified easily by strikers
… please message us if you have any other theories

05/09/2026

Aileen Drummond at The Bridge Folk Club, 1 June 2026

The Shores Of Old Blighty (Graeme Miles)

05/09/2026

Teddy Cuthbert at The Bridge Folk Club, 1 June 2026

The Coal Owner And The Pitman’s Wife (William Hornsby, 1844)

This takes the form of a conversation that includes a fierce criticism of those with power and money but without much human empathy

It was written by William Hornsby of Shotton Moor, County Durham, England in 1844, and sold as a broadsheet to raise funds to support a miners’ strike in the area. Many miners were religious, and this song was suitable for pubs and church halls alike

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Subscribe to Teddy Cuthbert’s YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/)

04/09/2026

John Moran and Charlotte Staples at The Bridge Folk Club, 15 June 2026

Adieu Adieu (Trad)

04/09/2026

Chris and Steve Wilson at The Bridge Folk Club, 9 February 2026

The Husband-man And The Serving-man (Trad)

The Husband-man And The Serving-man is on Chris and Steve Wilson’s CD ‘Fifty Years On’. Their sleeve notes say ‘From the singing of Peter Bellamy and Royston Wood. Originally recorded by Peter Kennedy from the singing of Fred and Ray Cantwell of Standlake in Oxfordshire. It is a discussion on the merits of being employed (soldier) or independent (farmer)’

Chris and Steve are two of the brothers from the amazing folk institution The Wilson Family from Teesside, England. The family’s website is at
www.thewilsonfamilyfolkgroup.co.uk. Look for the Welly Folk Club tab for the current calendar at their superb folk club in Wolviston, County Durham. It runs on Thursdays and it’s always a fantastic evening

03/09/2026

Vic Gammon at The Bridge Folk Club. 15 June 2026

The Foggy Dew (Trad)

Vic says there was a broadside version of this in the 1600s, a nasty song called ‘The Yorkshire Damsel Frightened’, when two men frighten a young woman into bed because of a ghost, the bugaboo. That ‘bugaboo’ somehow got corrupted into ‘Foggy Dew’

Some variants have been considered far too racy for broadcast, particularly across the pond in the US in the first half of the 1900s: Burl Ives was actually jailed for thirty days for singing it. That didn’t stop him, though, and he even included three verses in a Hollywood movie in 1946. Good for him!

03/09/2026

Sam Baxter and Merle Harbron at The Bridge Folk Club, 6 July 2026

An t-Alltan (The Stream) (Trad)

This is on Sam and Merle’s first EP. Their sleeve notes say ‘Merle found this air in the Tobar an Dualchais archive in a recording made in 1973 of the Oban High School Gaelic Choir, the same school Merle would attend some years later. According to the archive it's a descriptive song praising a stream. The poet listens to the sound of the brook and is reminded of the days of his youth. This tune provided the inspiration for the artwork on the front of this record (created by Merle's dad Dale) a print depicting a section of the Abhainn Teithil, a river that flows through Sutherland's Grove in Argyll, near where Merle grew up’

02/09/2026

Pete Shepheard at The Bridge Folk Club, 15 June 2026

A Wise Man From The North Sea Strand (Trad)

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The Bridge Hotel, Castle Garth
Newcastle Upon Tyne
NE11RQ

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