Join Lancashire Sid for an evening celebrating the county

The Friends of St Anne’s Library and Lancashire County Council’s Community Heritage team is presenting A Lancashire Garland of the songs, poems and stories of St Anne’s, the Fylde and Rossendale.

The evening, which starts at 7.30pm and costs £2.50, is part of the ‘St Anne’s on the Sea: the Rossendale connection’ project.

Sid has been called a “Lancashire Dialect Historian”, (a description coined by Paul Martin of BBC2’s Flog It) with almost 40 years of experience of researching, collecting and performing dialect works from the county’s literary heritage.

He is also Chairman of The Lancashire Society, committee member of the Edwin Waugh Dialect Society and founder of the National Dialect Day, which is being held in Exeter on October 18-20.

During the evening Sid will be reciting the work of some of the Lancashire poets, many of whom came had connections with the Rossendale area – such as Edwin Waugh and Samuel Laycock.

Born in Rochdale in 1817 Waugh was a full-time professional writer by 1860 and went on to publish many dialect works and tales of life in Lancashire as well as working as a raconteur. He died in Cheshire in 1890 and his body was taken back to Manchester for burial.

Laycock was born in Yorkshire in 1826 and the family moved to Cheshire in 1837.

Much of Laycock’s work was inspired by his experiences working in the cotton industry including periods of unemployment during the cotton famine.

For a time he was a librarian at the Whitworth Institute in Fleetwood.

His two most famous books are Lancashire Rhymes (1864) and Lancashire Songs (1866).

Laycock and his family eventually settled in Blackpool and several of his later works relate to Blackpool and the Fylde coast.

Call the library on 08450530005 or e-mail [email protected].