Benjamin Britten wearing Orfords – the Suffolk fishermen’s ideal in trousers

Britten in a pair of Orfords

Our fashion correspondent writes: Orfords are a traditional style of simple rugged canvas seafaring jeans said to have been much favoured on the Suffolk coast between the wars – and now you can buy your own pair online from Old Town Clothing.

I gather Benjamin Britten had two pairs made up in chambray by an Aldeburgh tailor for himself and Peter Pears, who in turn knitted two fetching bobble hats. Sadly I haven’t been able to obtain a photograph of Britten and Pears wearing the local fishermen’s garb, but I Old Town’s William Brown rustled up the image above showing how composer Britten might have looked in his Orfords.

Now, if anyone does have a photo of Britten and Pears in those bobble hats and sailors’ trousers that they’d like to share with a wider public, do please get in touch at gmatking@gmail.com.

My thanks to Otis Luxton for pointing this one out.

I don’t know why it is, but I have to say that I haven’t found a pair of trousers that made me smile as much as this since I discovered a photo of my Dad wearing blue jeans some time in the mid 1950s. He never wore anything like that again…

PS – Chambray, or cambric, is a fine fabric woven with white threads across a coloured warp, and gets its name from Cambrai in Northern France.

Now and Then 1979 – lifeboatman and local fisherman Shrimp Davies talks about life and work at Cromer

Now and Then film Shrimp Davies

The East Anglian Film Archive has some cracking stuff. Here’s a 1979 film in which local fisherman and legendary lifeboatman Shrimp Davies talks about life and work around the beaches of Cromer in Norfolk, and finishes up with some singing and stepdancing in a favourite pub. We’ve seen the last bit before, but the rest is new and it’s all interesting.

Here’s how the archive describes the short film:

‘Shots of the streets of Cromer, guided by Henry ‘Shrimp’ Davies. He shows Cromer town centre, Bob Davies’ Crab Shop, and the bust of lifeboatman Henry Blogg. He walks down to the beach to the crab boats which gives clear views of Cromer and its major buildings, including the Church and the Pier. A stills sequence, compares various scenes of Cromer in the 1970s with how they appeared in 1890. There seems to have been very little change. An interesting feature from this sequence are the bathing machines sitting on the beach. Crab boats are winched onto a trailer and then pulled up the beach by tractor and the crabs unloaded. There are shots of children playing on the beach and of a Punch and Judy man setting up. Concludes with shots of the interior of the Bath Hotel. Fisherman are singing and step-dancing to the accompaniment of Percy Brown on the accordion.’

I’d call that accordion a melodeon, but it’s still a great thing…

Btw, I love this photo of Blogg.

While we’re looking at the EAFA’s material, there’s a fabulous piece of 1902 footage showing herring drifters returning to port and Scottish fisher lassies on the Great Yarmouth’s quays, and a 1930s piece showing bad weather at Clacton in Essex – including a paddle steamer leaving Clacton Pier, probably in order to take holiday makers home to London despite the storm.

You’d better know their nicknames or you’ll never find ’em…

Bennett Middleton talks in this great little Rescue Wooden Boats video about nicknames in the fishing community along the coast of East Anglia.

Having grown up in a small community, I have no difficulty recognising the need for nicknames – and I have no doubt about how they arise. Usually, all it needs is for someone to say or do something a little daft or unusual just once, and the name will stick for life. If something can be found that you don’t want to hear over an over again, that will be your name…

And that’s still what happens around the yard where we keep our little boat.

I must say, the Rescue Wooden Boats folks are going great guns in conserving aspects of the local maritime heritage. Latest items of news are:

  • they’re setting up a visitor centre for people viewing restoration work in the boatyard at Stiffkey
  • they’ve been given the lovely Sheringham-built whelker Harvester to care. She will be on the water soon and will be going about promoting Rescue Wooden Boats (by the way, since we were talking about nicknames, I should mention her first owner was a man called Sid ‘Custard’ Cooper)
  • they have also acquired Bessie, another of the area’s few remaining whelkers She was built in 1934 and was involved with the Dunkirk rescue. Volunteers have scraped and painted her to stabilise her and she is now back on a mooring awaiting refurbishment
  • plans have been made to take the lifeboat and Dunkirk veteran Lucy Lavers back to Dunkirk by sea for the 75th anniversary of the evacuation of troops in 2015. From that year also, the listed historic ship will be taking the public on trips afloat from Wells-next-the-Sea in the summers. Rescue Wooden Boats is applying for a Heritage Lottery grant to enable this to happen