ABSTRACT
The History of Bacup Old Band makes fascinating reading and paints a vivid picture of contesting and other aspects of banding in the 1860s and 1870s. The 1861 Crystal Palace contest was another two-day affair, taking place on Tuesday 23 and Thursday 25 July, and was again highly successful. In 1872 and for the next 40 years Lieutenant Charles Godfrey of the Royal Horse Guards arranged all Belle Vue test pieces, including those for the July contests, introduced in 1886 for bands of a lower standard than that required for the September contest. The 1867 Belle Vue contest proved to be a fiasco, with the winners, Clay Cross, actually being an amalgamation of three bands–Matlock, Chesterfield and the real Clay Cross. Virtually all public playing by bands in the nineteenth century was in the open air–even at major contests. Meltham Mills's solo cornet player was Alexander Owen, destined to become the third member of the ‘Triumvirate’.
