About us
About US
Who we are
When Shan was a teenager, a customer in her grandfather’s South London pub, who knew she enjoyed singing, gave her four books of folk songs. They were soon marked with her notes and arrangements as she started to sing at school and church concerts, and even on BBC Radio. Her interest in song continued but family life took precedence until she started singing in public again in the late 90s.
Martin also sang at school and discovered folk music at University. He was drawn to English traditional song and started to write songs using ideas from traditional sources. The discovery of previously unknown manuscripts from Sabine Baring-Gould in 1992 led to his interest in Baring-Gould’s work becoming a passion (some say obsession!). Since then he has conducted research into Baring-Gould’s life and work, and made new discoveries about his work in folklore and traditional song.
He has written a number of articles about his work on Baring-Gould and other Victorian and Edwardian folk song collectors. He regularly delivers talks about folk song for various organisations. His prize-winning book, ‘As I Walked Out, Sabine Baring-Gould and the Search for the Folk Songs of Devon and Cornwall’ (2017), has now been joined by ‘The Forgotten Songs of the Upper Thames, Songs from the Alfred Williams Collection’ (2021). He is the Secretary of the Traditional Song Forum (http://tradsong.org)
Shan and Martin met in 2000 and started to sing together in 2003. Their first album together, ‘Parallel Strands’, was issued by WildGoose in 2005. Their repertoire includes a number of songs from the Baring-Gould collection. They married in 2006. Shan has also become involved in work on the Baring-Gould collection and has transcribed nearly two thousand songs and song texts from his manuscripts. These transcriptions are now starting to appear as additions to the Baring-Gould song manuscripts on the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library Digital Database (see https://vwml.org).
What we do
We sing songs
Mostly English traditional songs, and, particularly, songs from Devon and Cornwall. The reason for this is our deep interest in the song collection made by Sabine Baring-Gould in these counties at the end of the 19th Century. We do, though, enrich our repertoire with gems that we have discovered on our travels in North America or songs that were enjoyed by our parents. We usually sing unaccompanied and in harmony, though we always include some solo items in our programme. Shan sometimes uses the autoharp to accompany her songs. We will sing in a variety of situations: Folk festivals and clubs, societies with relevant interests, and, really, any group of people who are interested in hearing us.
We do research
With Shan’s assistance, Martin is carrying out research into several aspects of traditional song and folk song collectors, as well continuing his work on Sabine Baring-Gould. A list of his published papers can be found on the ‘Lists’ page
We give talks
Over the years Martin has given a number of talks about different aspects of Baring-Gould’s life and work. (Folk song, folk lore, Travels in Iceland etc.) – for a full list see our leaflet. We also have a number of programmes that involve more singing – essentially, a concert with extended links between the songs. He also talks more generally about traditional song and other song collectors
We deliver workshops
Shan has developed a number of workshops based on her professional experience as a speech and language therapist. In these she teaches people how their voices work, how to look after them and how better to use their voices for singing. Apart from working with people on a one-to-one basis from home, she also leads workshops on a number of topics related to the singing voice.
Phone
+44 (0) 1285 651 104
Please use the form below.
Address
59 Roberts Close,
Cirencester GL7 2RP