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For the last two years my life and work have been all about the story of Lowesto ’s lost fishing village. With my Poetry People hat on, our Grit project won the Na onal Crea ve Learning Award category for literature and crea ve wri ng. As a writer, I’ve comprehensively revised the book of The Grit(originally published in 1997 and co-wri en with Jack Rose) and the beau ful new edi on was published by Corner Street in September 2019. Pearls from The Grit – my first ‘proper’ stage play – has an in mate rela onship with both project and book.
If you saw Pearls from The Grit during its pilot tour last autumn, then I hope you’ll welcome the way the show has developed to include the character of Jessie – Billy’s Sco sh wife and Ruby’s mother. I always wanted to write more about how the fishing industry depended on women. They worked non-stop: gu ng and packing the fish, mending nets in the stores and at home and, o en with very li le money, they brought up the children single-handed while the men were off at sea for weeks at a me. Women were absolutely vital, especially when mes were hard.
For me, the real joy of wri ng for the stage is the magic that happens when perfectly-cast professional actors bring the words off the page. The con nuity of the company for Pearls from The Grit has been very special – the same East Anglian cast and crew making a local story universal. And you can’t beat working with a brilliant produc on team and the best musical director/composer. At the end of the first day of rehearsals, our stage manager Zoë tweeted, ‘It feels like coming home.’ And so it does.
Dean Parkin October 2019 Writer & Narrator DEAN PARKIN Cast SALLY-ANN BURNETT TIM FITZHIGHAM DAVID REDGRAVE ... and the voice of JACK ROSE
Composer & Pianist MAURICE HORHUT
Director ALYS KIHL, WONDERFUL BEAST Producer NAOMI JAFFA, POETRY PEOPLE Stage Manager ZOË WELLS Projections & Programme Design DEAN PARKIN Lighting Design TORBEN MERRIOTT, BLACKWING LTD Lighting Technician LEE WHITTAKER Marketing JO LEVERETT
Thank you to soloists Lucy Carroll, Travis Denny and Shlomit Timtey plus classmates at Oulton Broad and St Mary’s Primary Schools for their renditions of Climbing Up The Walls and Cobblestones & Fishbones.
The show lasts around 70 minutes with no interval Please make sure all digital alarms and mobile phones are switched off during the performance SALLY-ANN BURNETT – RUBY / JESSIE Sally lives in Norwich. She was born in Scotland and trained at The Academy of Live and Recorded Arts. Her stage work includes the Royal Na onal Theatre, West End and Repertory in the UK. She has worked extensively with Eastern Angles in Ipswich touring with many of their produc ons, most recently Food Wars. She has recorded many audio books for the RNIB and her television work includes Midsomer Murders, EastEnders, Holby City and Casualty.
TIM FITZHIGHAM – BILLY / THE HOST Tim FitzHigham was born in Norfolk. A mul -award winning comedian, author and actor, he’s appeared on BBC Radio 4 in his series The Gambler and curates New Comedy for BBC Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. His TV work includes Time Team, The Windsors and Super Human Challenge. In film he's worked with Clint Eastwood, Anthony Hopkins and Ma Damon and appeared in Paddington 2. His book All At Sea is his true story of being the first person to row the English Channel in a bath tub.
MAURICE HORHUT – TICKLER SAM Maurice studied at City University and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. He has worked with a wide range of performers including Marc Almond, Max Jaffa, Ian McShane, Sandi Toksvig and Ben Whishaw. As well as appearances on television, radio and in the concert hall, he has held residencies and played at fes vals and jazz venues in Amsterdam, Berlin, Montreal and Paris. Since 2007 he has collaborated with Dean Parkin on many poetry and music shows and community projects.
DEAN PARKIN – NARRATOR Dean was born in Lowesto and le school to work in a bookshop. In the 1990s he co-wrote and published nearly 40 local history books before working for The Poetry Trust for 15 years. He took his one man show Dean’s Dad’s Ducksto Edinburgh in 2010 and hisPoem for Suffolkacross the county in 2014. His two poetry collec ons are The Swan Machine (2015) and The Bubblewrap (2017) for children. His revised edi on of The Grit: The Story of Lowesto ’s Beach Village was published in 2019.
DAVID REDGRAVE – NED / HAPPY WELHAM David was born and raised in Lowesto . Extensive theatre work includes seasons at Ipswich, Milford Haven, Keswick, Open Air Theatre Regents Park and in the West End appearing in Moving (Queens Theatre) and Yuki (Arts Theatre). Locally he's worked with Eastern Angles, Red Rose Chain and Common Ground. He's appeared in over 20 pantomimes, recorded several plays for Radio 4, and television appearances include Dr Who, London’s Burning, The Chief and Poppyland. JACK ROSE(1926-2000) was born in Lowesto into a ‘Beach’ family. He worked as a longshoreman, trawlerman, dri er- man, lifeboatman, fish worker and school caretaker. His interest in the town began a er he returned from service in the Second World War and discovered how much Lowesto had changed. In 1970 he began giving slideshows and talks in schools, clubs and old people’s homes – regularly filling the Marina Theatre and raising money for local chari es. The first of his eleven books was published in 1973. His favourite was The Grit: The Story of Lowesto ’s Beach Village (1997) which he co-wrote with Dean Parkin who has revised the new edi on, published in 2019. Jack never saw himself as an historian and preferred to be thought of as the ‘last of the old characters’, as he was described by Trevor Westgate in the Lowesto Journal. I was never hardly at school! The boys around here will tell yer. I was mostly on the harbour beach playing about. They used to come down a er me! I used to row mother’s n bath around the harbour. Jack Rose
DEAN ON JACK... He might not have been an historian but Jack was definitely a writer. He was compelled to write – he filled notebooks, old diaries, the backs of envelopes. He wrote every day, his lunch-breaks spent in Lowesto ’s Record Office going through old newspapers on microfilm, jo ng down dates, events and funny stories. He had an eye for detail and he was a true storyteller who knew how to deliver a funny line. I’ve used many of his notes as the basis for ‘Pearls’ – some that he collected, others that he wrote himself. From medicine bo les at sea, to straw in the bedrooms, those details all come from Jack. He was a true friend and a pleasure to work with. He was the first writer I ever met. I’m thankful for what he taught me. Photos: (Top) Jack in 1999, (middle) as a lifeboatman and (le ) as a boy watching a sailing smack leave Lowesto harbour. ALYS KIHL / DIRECTOR Alys is the ar s c director of Wonderful Beast theatre company which she founded in 1997. Most recent produc on 2019: The Last Woodwose by Thea Smiley, premiered in the HIghTide Fes val and toured woodlands, churches and a barn. Other produc ons: Return of the Wildmanby Thea Smiley, toured 2017; Orla and the Sunand Orla’s Moon for Early Years, 2015-2018. The Wonderful Beast Singers were formed in 2014 and have par cipated in two community operas and many public performances. NAOMI JAFFA / PRODUCER Naomi grew up in London and Scarborough. Daughter of professional musicians, she started out in classical music management. She ran the Aldeburgh Poetry Fes val for 22 years, where her drama produc ons included Andrew Mo on’s first stage play and a re- staging of Christopher Logue’s New Numbers starring Ben Whishaw. A published poet, she is co-founder/director of Poetry People – 2019 Na onal Crea ve Learning Award winner – and producer of last year’s acclaimed pilot tour of Pearls from The Grit. ZOË WELLS / STAGE MANAGER Zoë is an actor, writer and director. She is a graduate of GSA. Her credits include Some Women and Bits of Boy (The Cut), INK Fes val 2019, A Discontented Honk, (The Bread and Roses Theatre), What a Palaver (The ETCETERA Theatre) and The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits (The Lion and Unicorn Theatre). She directs Mother/Land this winter. Ar s c director of Uproar Theatre, she is associate ar st to Bee in my Beanie. PEARLS FROM THE GRIT – THE MUSCIAL DIRECTOR’S NOTES Maurice Horhut composed all the music for the Pearls from The Grit produc on. “When Dean first men oned the possibility of collabora ng on a musical show about The Grit, I started thinking of work songs – songs tradi onally sung whilst working, typically accompanying the physical exer on of the task at hand. There are elements of this emula on of work and sea movement in both the ‘Flood’ and ‘Dri erman’ songs and choruses. I also tried out some incidental music that would evoke the sen ment of the age. Over me, I realised that all the characters in the play would have poems/lyrics to deliver, and se ng these to music became the mainstay of my composing. The overall inspira on was Victorian drawing-room ballads and Music-Hall di es, although the frene c ‘Great Fishing Bonanza’ sequence required some dance music – so I devised a piece in the Rag me spirit of the 1900s. Happy Welham’s number came to me quite quickly; the words inspired melodic fragments which emerged into the song. An excep on is the very quiet solo piano accompanying the photograph of the Mariner’s Score School children: for this I improvised a piece of ethereal music a er hearing a street musician playing the Kora (the long-necked harp lute of western Africa). It has been an interes ng and rewarding experience, to compose new music that evokes the spirit of Lowesto 's lost fishing village, and I've par cularly enjoyed working as a team, with the writer, actors, director and technical crew.” CLIMBING UP THE WALLS Lowesto ’s old tradi onal May Day song ‘Climbing Up The Walls’ became a theme for Pearls from The Grit. The original melody was a Salva on Army hymn 'Turn to the Lord and seek salva on' and, for the purposes of the show, music and lyrics for two ‘new’ verses were composed by Maurice and Dean. “I was never sure of the tune,” says Dean, “but in early 2018, on a visit to a residen al home in Lowesto , I met a 100-year old lady who remembered it and agreed to be recorded singing it once again.” The new version of ‘Climbing Up the Walls’ was taught to 240 children during The Grit project in 2018. This autumn, Poetry People taught the chorus to 735 pupils during introductory sessions in Lowesto , Great Yarmouth and King’s Lynn schools. These children will all a end free schools ma née performances of Pearls from The Grit in their towns.
COBBLESTONES AND FISHBONES Dean wanted to create a song that might have been skipped to in the playground; Maurice was prompted by tradi onal work songs. The words were gathered in the Lowesto Mari me Museum in 2018 by pupils from eight local primary schools. It was a fun challenge to put all the words together to make a rhyming fishing family story that had to include nau cal vocabulary like molgogger and gimbal!
JESSIE’S SONG The character of Jessie – Sco sh wife of Billy and mother of Ruby – shows how much the fishing village depended on the women. They worked gu ng and packing the herring, mended nets in the stores and at home and, o en with hardly any money, brought up children single-handed while the men were off at sea for weeks at a me. Fishermen had the most dangerous job and their wives knew great insecurity, fear and anguish. Maurice says, “I grabbed all of the tradi onal Sco sh folk songs I could find, and looked for par cular colours in the music that seemed to evoke Sco shness, in melody, harmony and rhythm. Having wri en down dozens of snippets, I composed longer lines of melody and when Dean presented me with the lyric, I was able to adapt some of my lines to fit his, and the song was born.” Dean says, “I hope this song reflects the strength of these women and the dexterity of their work. Above all, it’s actually Jessie’s love song to her fisherman, her ‘Pearl from The Grit’.”
DRIFTERMAN’S SONG Lowesto ’s eminent historian David Butcher – known for his oral history books recalling the herring heydays – sang a rousing version of the ‘Trawlerman’s Song’ to Dean. In true folk tradi on, he adapted the words to create the ‘Dri erman’sSong’ which in turn prompted Maurice to find a way to blend tradi onal and new melodies. The song is a testament to the deep bond between fishermen.
POSTCARD HOME Whenever fishermen got safely into port they’d write a postcard home to reassure their families. This was in the days long before telephone or email, when the postal service offered fast communica on, with three or four postal collec ons and deliveries a day! A fisherman could arrive in North Shields in the morning and his postcard could arrive home by tea me. The idea that Billy would always send a postcard home to his daughter Ruby is at the heart of this song. Maurice says, “It was a pleasure to dis l all of my decades of experience playing popular song to create what sounds like an authen c Edwardian sen mental ballad. It’s a tear-jerker, and I must admit to some mes having welled-up whilst composing the music!”
HAPPY’S SONG Arthur ‘Happy’ Welham was a chimney sweep and one of The Grit’s most colourful characters. Dean discovered a story in a newspaper ar cle from 1905 about Happy winning a singing contest at Lowesto ’s Hippodrome. Another story from 1904 – about Welham appearing before the magistrate because he’d got into debt a er purchasing an unseaworthy boat – carried the headline, ‘Never had any luck’. Both stories combined naturally to generate a music hall romp starring Happy himself, complete with singalong chorus: ‘I’m Happy and I never had no luck’. Beau ful! I loved it. I laughed, I cried, I sang. AUDIENCE MEMBER
RUBY Sand is Grit in’t it? And there was plenty of sand down there. Unmade roads. And you needed plenty of Grit to live there!
DEAN It says here, in the early 1900s The Grit had 13 pubs and was home to over 2,000 people. The most pubs per popula on in the country!
Have another one In the Rising Sun Have two halves a er in The Balaclava Best ale and joyful in the Princess Royal
BILLY Spose boys were much the same as ever! When I was a nipper I used to borrow one of the small boats moored on the east side of Waveney Dock. They used to say if you chained and locked the boat at both ends the boys would take away the middle!
NED We were lucky to live so close to the sea. As children you’d spend your whole summer on the beach. We used to live down there. Mother knew where to find us.
Powerful, though ul and elegantly assembled. LIBBY PURVES, WRITER & BROADCASTER Funny, sad and thought-provoking. EAST ANGLIAN DAILY TIMES
BILLY I was 13. Started as the cook, on one of those old smacks. Workin' out of North Shields. Seasick, homesick, cooking for ten men!
RUBY Mother would never wash father's clothes the day he sails. She said that was like she was washing him away!
NED My mother, my sisters, my aunts, they were all beetsters.They’d mend nets at hoom too! The fishing couldn’t have gorn on without the women.
Quick with the fish and a flash of the knife work through the night and the gales a cut finger s ngs in the salt and the ice in the rain and the snow and the hail
JACK A miner might have a dangerous job but at night he could gew home and jump into bed with his old gal couldn’t he? Whereas a fisherman he had to lay out at sea for 12 days praying he'd get to see harbour again.
DEAN It's where you’re from. It's what you s ll see even if it's not really there...
I was hooked from start to finish, Laugh out loud, poignant – everything you want in a night out. Absolute bloody brilliant show! AUDIENCE MEMBER On 12th October 1913 10 MILLION herring were caught. One boat, The Boy Roy, ne ed £3,240.
In today's money that's £340,000!
In ONE DAY made by ONE BOAT at Lowesto in 1913
There were 770 vessels – 350 local, 420 Sco sh. Each with a crew of ten. That's nearly eight THOUSAND fishermen landing in Lowesto in 1913.
87% of the catch was exported to Germany and Russia. That's 466 MILLION herring!
More fish than the popula on of America!
Landed at Lowesto in 1913.
And that explains overfishing!
And the German & Russian exports stopped a er the First World War.
And thas’ why we was so hard-up in the 20s and 30s.
But who can forget the Great Fishing Bonanza of 1913?
The inspira on for the theatre show is The Grit book, wri en by Dean Parkin and Jack Rose. Originally published in 1997, it quickly became a local best- seller and is now considered an East Anglian oral history classic.
Over the last two years Dean has comprehensively revised the book, drawing on new interviews, documentary evidence and recently-discovered manuscripts. He has added a new final chapter to update the story. The book has been freshly designed too, by the Silk Pearce design agency, and now includes 250 photos plus specially-commissioned illustra ons by Templar award-winning Lowesto - born ar st Paula White.
Char ng the origins and heyday of Lowesto ’s lost fishing village,The Grit also tells the real-life stories behind the hardships of the 1920s and 1930s, the devasta on caused by the Second World War and the 1953 flood, the collapse of the herring industry, and final demoli on in the 1960s to make way for a new industrial estate. Despite every hardship, this most easterly community never lost its special ‘Grit’ spirit, which the book captures and celebrates.
BOOK EXTRACTS The Lowesto beach popula on are in every sense of the term a peculiar people. They are generally speaking a quiet unobtrusive class of persons, but when the latent ‘Viking’ spirit is aroused in their breasts, they are like the ocean in a storm. The Lowesto Journal, 1901
“A er the Scots girls had filled the barrels with herring we’d run along and kick the barrels, and if you weren’t quick enough the brine would go all over you or the boy running behind you. When you went into school at Mariners Score, those tortoise stoves, they used to get red hot and if you sat near them a er you did that, you Paperback edi on £22.50 would really s nk of fish!” Ron James Limited edi on hardback £35
Available from bookshops TV broadcaster Ian Nairn gave a lecture in the town at the or order online from Royal Hotel. Nairn praised the old co ages in the Beach www.cornerstreet.co.uk Village and described Whapload Road as having a ‘honky tonk vitality’. He went on to say that The Grit was the only part of Lowesto which was really worth saving... You may think we’re history long-lost village by the sea like dust beneath your boots but between you and me board up all the windows, but like the sun, we’ll rise Dunwich is more roman c Church bells chimin’ neath the sea we had three churches and thirteen pubs and we're talking recent history board up all the windows, empty all the houses but like the sun, we’ll rise Bombs dropped around the gasworks a flood tried to push us orf but the council went and finished the job all those memories lorst board up all the windows, empty all the houses dig up all the roads but like the sun, we’ll rise It's not our fault the fishing’s gorn We worked right hard night and day They built new houses round the town old families moved away board up all the windows, empty all the houses dig up all the roads, sca er all the people but like the sun, we’ll rise I'll tell yer where this village was you won’t find much le there a turbine marks the spot and there's something in the air board up all the windows, empty all the houses dig up all the roads, sca er all the people turn the place to rubble but like the sun, we’ll rise DEAN Mariners Score School, Class 1, 1924. Let's see if we can bring these Gritsters back to life! Ruby – do you know any names on this photo? RUBY Well, I do know thas me! Back row, middle. Bow in my hair. We certainly look rough and ready, dunt we? I do know their faces but the names, they're gone I'm afraid. If only that picture could talk...
DEAN Happy Welham, the chimney sweep – he was another character. Lived in Lighthouse Score with his wife Phoebe. RUBY What about when the German Navy bom- barded the town in 1916? Unexploded shell fell right outside his front gate. Old Happy gets a broom, rolls that bomb into his garden, so he could charge people tuppence to look at it! NED At least ll the police come along and stopped him! Poetry People is delighted to acknowledge the support of an Arts Council England National Lottery project grant for the Pearls from The Grit 2019 tour. We are also grateful to our other public funders, our generous private donors, and the many individuals who have been involved in the production.
PEARLS FROM THE GRIT – INDIVIDUAL DONORS Alex Beard & Emma Verne , Criona & Tony Mackintosh Diana Triefus, Charlo e Triefus & Lloyd Zuckerberg and those who wish to remain anonymous
SPECIAL THANKS TO... Jayne Aus n, Suffolk Museum Development & Partnership Manager Phil Aves, Lowesto Rising Cultural Educa on Partnership Ivan Cu ng, Eastern Angles, Jayne Knight, Suffolk Arts Development Manager Leiston Press, New Cut Arts Centre, Halesworth, Suffolk Peter Smith Photography, Rob Steer & Jack Pearce of Silk Pearce Design Group
Mischi Verne for invaluable help with The Grit book, Corner Street & Poetry People Jackie & Bob Emery for permission to use archive audio of Jack Rose Burt Collyer and Robert Whybrow for archive photographs Mick Hart for the gansey sweater, Bill Jackson for Happy Welham’s hat, and The Seagull Theatre and Lowestoft Players for various costumes Pete Smith for all Pearls from The Grit photography – www.photosmith.uk.com
Poetry People brings poetry to people and people to poetry, often for the first time. Co directors Dean Parkin & Naomi Jaffa reach out to the wider community through projects, the Suffolk Young Poets competition, workshops, live events & touring shows. Poetry People is a registered Community Interest Company No. 10706570 www.poetrypeople.co.uk THE GRIT PROJECT 2018 supported by the Na onal Lo ery Heritage Fund A highly imagina ve project, reaching right across the community and connec ng the genera ons in a variety of different ways to bring the past to life in a part of the world where it had been all but forgo en. Melyvn Burgess, Carnegie Medal winning author Na onal Crea ve Learning Award judge
1920s postcard of Lowesto dri erman hauling the herring nets
Scots fisher girls packing the herring barrels in the 1920s
1920s regulars outside the Princess Royal, one of the 13 pubs on The Grit