On to the third volume of songs resulting from Darren Hayman’s Thankful Villages project. The fifth village in this new volume is Minting, Lincolnshire.
When I arrive in Minting a strange and wild-looking cat climbs into my car and refuses to leave. David finds me trying to coax the cat out. David is a school head who lives in the old school house. He is a keen member of the historical society, a musician, and makes his own notebooks.
David is also a keen detectorist and was happy to show me his boxes of finds from the fields around his home.
He took me detectoring and we found something quickly. He dug a small hole and found an old Chinese coin.
David had found some before around the village.
Apparently Francis Bashforth, the local rector in 1857 to 1908, invented a new system for measuring the velocity of bullets and often visited China.
A few weeks after my visit David sent me the coin in the post.
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Thankful Villages Vols. 1 & 2 are out now on Rivertones. You can buy physical copies here, or listen on Spotify.
Thankful Villages Volume 3 is released tomorrow, and is available to order here.
Finally, you can listen to a new 53-minute edit of sounds, textures, unused voices and field recordings from Thankful Villages here.