Not quite Haydn

This lovely building is Settle Victoria Hall. It opened in 1852, is the oldest surviving Music Hall in the world and predates the Settle-Carlisle railway by thirteen years.

It opened on Monday 11 October 1853 with a performance of Haydn’s Creation given by Settle Choral Society, joined by vocalists and instrumentalists from Leeds Choral Society. And by coincidence we are going to a concert here tonight, exactly 168 years later, on Monday 11 October 2021. We will be here to see Aly Bain and Phil Cunningham . . . again!

We have lost count of how many times we have been to see these two over lots of years, but this might be only the second time we have seen them in England.

We’ve had the concert booked for a long time and only later decided to combine it with travelling to Kent. So we arrived in Settle to buy cheese at the very best Cheese Shop and get great fish and chips. We are staying tonight at the Premier Inn in Bingley. A beautiful day to be back on home ground. Then we will head south to Hythe in the morning.