Cockerton Band celebrates its 150th anniversary with concert tonight

Or probably more accurately, 158 years old as the Cockerton Saxhorn Band is known to have played a concert in the beckside grounds of Cockerton Hall on August 22, 1864.

But, for reasons that have never been fully explained, the band has always believed that 1870 was the year of its formation.

“Old letter headings give the date the band was established as 1870, not 1864 or 1880,” says the band’s official history written 20 years ago by the Harrison family whose members were among the founders. “This date was not open to question, being fixed upon by old members, many of whom must have been a party to its birth.”

Even if you accept 1870 as the foundation date, it cannot explain why tonight’s concert is the 150th anniversary show – until you factor in the very 21st Century phenomenon of Covid which cancelled all of 2020’s celebrations.

So perhaps the most important date in the history of Cockerton Band is June 28, 1846, when Adolphe Sax in Belgium patented his newest invention: the saxophone. Sax was a musical pioneer, inventing valved metal instruments like the saxhorn and the saxotromba, culminating in the saxophone. Many others refined his instruments, but new industrial processes meant that they could be made fairly cheaply so that working class communities could, with scrimping and saving, afford to set up their own bands.

Hoggett's Military band, with composer and conductor James Aloysius Hoggett in the centre, holding the baton, at South Park, Darlington

In Darlington, the Hoggett family had a music shop on Northgate called Beethoven House, from where they sold instruments and sheet music, and offered lessons and their services to anyone who was having a dance or a party which needed some music. They set up several of the earliest bands in town, and James Hoggett is credited with starting one in Cockerton in 1864.

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It played with the Darlington Philharmonic Band in the grounds of Polam Hall to raise money for the dispensary – a forerunner of the hospital – on July 28, 1864, and it also performed at Cockerton Hall on August 22, 1864, at the start of Cockerton Feast.

This band, which rehearsed in a room of the Harrison family’s laundry off the village green, seems not to have been permanent, and James Hoggett went off to play with his other bands. Therefore, the date of 1870 is given for the formation of the current Cockerton Band, and it isn’t until the 1880s that a clear picture of their activities begins to emerge.

Cockerton Prize Silver Band in 1885, when the members were given bowler hats for a competition at Crystal Palace in London

In 1880, a cocoa palace – these were fashionable clubs selling drinking chocolate rather than beer - opened in Forcett Street and it became the band’s base. In 1881, the band had to abandon a concert on the village green when a thunderstorm broke; in 1884, the members acquired new uniforms and marched around the green in them in support of local Liberals who were campaigning for women to get the vote; in 1885, they went to Crystal Palace to compete in a national competition for the first time. The parish clerk gave each member a bowler hat so they departed for London on the train with hoots of derision ringing in their ears.

Four generations of the Harrison family have been associated with Cockerton Band over the last 150 years. The four young boys are Gladney, Billy, Bobby and Sonnet Harrison (Sonnet is in the white outfit at the front) in 1905 with their uncle Tommy Brown, who was president of the club. Behind are their cousins, Dan and Raymond Pawson. In the early days of brass bands, fiddles were a feature so perhaps that is why there are three on show here

In 1905, the Rise Carr Rolling Mills Band disbanded. They had a set of silver-plated instruments made by Besson, a leading manufacturer, which had been given to them by Sir Theodore Fry, the town’s MP who co-owned the rolling mills. Cockerton held a series of concerts to raise £250 to buy the instruments so they became the Cockerton Silver Band.

But the band struggled to find a permanent home, where no one would mind their rehearsal noise. For a while, they had a large wooden room behind the Drover’s Inn – which has recently had a small housing estate built on its site – and then they turned the Dr Syntax Inn – named after a famous racehorse – on the green into their musical institute.

Cockerton Garth was built in 1860 for solicitor Thomas Robinson by well known Darlington architect JP Pritchett. In 1920, Cockerton Silver Band bought it and turned the coach-house into their bandroom. They replaced the mansion with their working

In 1921, having survived the First World War, they bought Cockerton Garth, a mansion built in 1860 for solicitor Thomas Robinson. They turned the stableblock into their bandroom, and then pulled down the mansion and replaced it with their club and concert room.

Cockerton Band club on the site of the mansion called Cockerton Garth

It launched them into their most successful phase, as they became one of the region’s best bands: they won the railway centenary contest in 1925 in Darlington; in 1933, the won contests held in West Auckland, Eggleston and Middleton-in-Teesdale, and in 1938, at the Alexandra Palace in London, they won first prize in the Workingmen’s Club Bands Contest.

Cockerton Band playing in Darlington Market Place in 1937 to celebrate the coronation of George VI

Cockerton Band proudly display their trophies in 1938 having won the Working Mens' Clubs Bands Contest in 1938

After the Second World War, as times changed, the band diversified – they celebrated VE night by playing old time dance music on Redcar seafront, and then they arranged a Glen Miller style programme to play at the Baths Hall, which was Darlington’s premier dancehall in the 1950s. In that decade, they even welcomed their first female member, Nan Johnson, who in her youth had been a trapeze artist with a circus and her act involved playing the trumpet as she swung from ropes in the big top.

However, the best story connected with Cockerton Band is undoubtedly concerns its connection to Darlington Football Club.

Cockerton Silver Band prepare to march from Darlington Market Place to Feethams prior to the match against Lincoln City on January 19, 1951. The match finished 1-1 and was watched by a crowd of 5,019. The posters they are carrying advertise that the "best action from the cup ties", including Carlisle v Arsenal, will be shown at the Gaumont cinema in Northgate on Mon, Tues and Weds at 1.40pm, 5.30pm and 8.35pm

From 1928 to 1961, the club paid the band £5-a-match to entice spectators out of the town centre pubs and into the ground in time for the 3pm kick-off.

They did this by forming up in the Market Place around 2.30pm and loudly playing their music before marching off to the Post Horn Galop and their special version of I’m Henery the Eighth, I Am.

I’m Henry the Eighth, I Am was a musichall number made famous in 1910 by Cockney star Harry Champion – Champion’s other big hits included Boiled Beef and Carrots in 1909 and Any Old Iron in 1911. The song had absolutely nothing to with King Henry VIII but was all about the marital activities of the widow next door who had had seven husbands called Henry:

I'm ’Enery the Eighth, I am!

I'm ’Enery the Eighth, I am!

I got married to the widow next door,

She's been married seven times before.

Every one was a ’Enery.

She wouldn't have a Willie or a Sam.

I'm her eighth old man named ’Enery.

I'm ’Enery the Eighth, I am.

As a reward for swelling the crowd, the football club gave band members free admission to Feethams. Therefore, anyone wishing to avoid paying at the turnstiles would join the back of the band, whip out a trumpet from under their greatcoats and pretend they were playing along to I’m Henery…

I’m Henery the Eighth, I Am became the Quakers theme tune in the way that Middlesbrough run out to Pigbag or West Ham are associated with I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles.

The musical arrangement between the club and the band came to an end in 1961. Darlington finished in the dizzy heights of seventh in Division Four that year, so the arrangement cannot have ended because the tune was bringing them back luck. Perhaps it was ended because there were now thousands of pretend cornet and horn blowers gaining free entry to Feethams...

Typically, once the Quakers had given up on I’m Henery… it became popular. Joe Brown adopted it and recorded it as a b-side. George Harrison heard it and it became part of the Beatles’ early repertoire, and then in 1965, Herman’s Hermits it took No 1 in both the UK and the US.

Dick and Charlie Harrison were the fourth generation of Harrisons connected to Cockerton Band. Dick, the younger of the brothers, died in 2021, aged 89

As it is Cockerton Band’s most famous tune, it will appear in tonight’s concert as part of a piece written specially for the occasion by Ian Robinson. The band is celebrating winning promotion to the 1st Section of the brass band world’s national championship – in footballing terms, they have made it to the Championship level, same as Middlesbrough – and tonight’s concert will also feature guest soloist Richard Marshall, the principal cornet player of the Black Dyke Band, “the most famous brass band in the world”.

The concert in Central Hall starts at 7.30pm. Tickets are £8 or £5 for concessions and are available on the door.

Cockerton Band marching with Santa on his Round Table sleigh on High Row

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