'Nottingham's Owd Oss Mummers and their Scrapbooks'
Abstract
Nottingham's Owd Oss Mummers were formed in the late 1960s as an offshoot of the Nottingham Traditional Music Club, and continued into the 1980s. They have not totally disappeared, although they are now in new guises. The author joined them shortly after their formation, and after going to college performed with them in the late 1970s. For nearly all the time they existed, the Owd Oss Mummers maintained scrap books in which they lodged tour reports, photographs, press cuttings and other ephemera. The scrapbooks are now showing the ravages of time, with items becoming unstuck, bindings disintegrating, and so forth. This talk will outline the history of the group, illustrated with excerpts from the scrapbooks and personal reminiscences. It will also explore some of the issues regarding the long term conservation and preservation of such scrapbooks.
[Full PDF - 2.24MB]
About the author
Peter Millington has been researching British and Irish folk drama for 40 years, and gained his PhD from the University of Sheffield in 2002 for his thesis The Origins and Development of English Folk Plays. He founded the Traditional Drama Research Group's website http://www.folkplay.info/, and currently runs the Master Mummers website http://www.mastermummers.org/.
Last year, Peter spoke with Caspar James on 'Mummies and Masquerades: English and Caribbean Connections'
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