Dates

• Existence: 1918 - 1986

Biography

Mary Robinson was born in 1918 the daughter of a Wharfedale farmer. While she was working as an infant school teacher in Bradford she set up a project to collect folk songs. Nigel Hudleston was taken on as a male chaperon for her visits to record folk singers in pubs. Nigel Hudleston was born in 1915 into a landowning family and spent his childhood at Rillington, near Malton in North Yorkshire. He graduated with a B.A. from Trinity College Cambridge and inherited Cayton Hall, at South Stainley near Harrogate, in 1943. He moved in during the 1960s, after he married Mary. For over 20 years, the couple travelled throughout Yorkshire and beyond, recording local folk songs and singers, but also collecting material relating to many other local customs and activities. Mary Hudleston died in 1986. Songs of the Ridings – a collection of Yorkshire folk songs – was published in 2001. Nigel Hudleston died in December 2006 at the age of 91. .