Notes from Underground

Singing in Lord Mulgrave's Dining Room

A small but intrepid group of eight turned up on Sunday 4 April at the Blue John Cavern in Castleton to venture a sing in the acoustically appealing chamber nicknamed "Lord Mulgrave's Dining Room". After a tour of the cave, we settled ourselves in the large domed chamber for a proper singaround. Material ranged from traditional to contemporary, obscure to well-known and hearty singalongs to sublime solos. Session highlights included The Bell-ringing Song — thoughtfully selected by Oliver Blensdorf because of its melodic emulation of bell-ringing, which he (correctly) thought might sound particularly nice in such a space; Alba, a haunting 12th century French song sung by Aukje Delnooz, and several very harmonious rounds (sung by everyone).

After we’d been singing for a while, we were rather surprised to see some familiar faces — several of those who had already been through the cave apparently enjoyed the singing enough to brave all those steps — again! Our singers began to feel the chill after an hour or so, at which point we decided it was time to head back up and outside (where it was considerably colder!) and adjourn to the warmth of the pub.

Plans are afoot to try another cave-sing in the autumn — but in a more easily-accessible cavern; that is, one that doesn’t involve 240 steps down (and up again)! Watch this space for details.

PS  The sing was recorded, and we hope to have two or three sound clips of the "highlights" mentioned above (complete with stream trickling softly in the background) available on the SRFN website by the time you read this newsletter.

The above piece appeared in South Riding Folk Network News  No. 44 (Summer/Autumn 2004).

We now have the promised recordings, in mp3 format. Unfortunately, the light wasn't good enough for photos; the engraving above is actually of Rutland Cavern. The recordings may distort a bit in places; Vikki will probably do a spot of re-engineering later on.