• Image of Lancashire Folklore Tapes Vol.III - Ginnel
  • Image of Lancashire Folklore Tapes Vol.III - Ginnel
  • Image of Lancashire Folklore Tapes Vol.III - Ginnel
  • Image of Lancashire Folklore Tapes Vol.III - Ginnel

Folklore Tapes Flexi-Disc Audio Book Series:

Rob St John / Sam Mcloughlin / David Chatton Barker
Lancashire Folklore Tapes Vol.III
Ginnel
Flexi-Disc Audio Book & DVD
Housed inside a handmade 18 page colour pamphlet.
Ltd Edition: 250

Originally conceived and realised as a new three minute film with pamphlet, this release is a more expanded version of a project which spilled over its vessel in content. With a seven inch containing the orginal score and narration as well as a patchwork of interviews and atmospherics captured during fieldtrips to Ginnels around Lancashire to investigate their heritage and current place in the modern world.

Ginnels are spaces in between: the paths and alleys that cut hidden channels through many towns in the north of England. Often following historical routes that pre-date urbanisation and are now squeezed by encroaching buildings, the dialect word for a ginnel varies across the north: snicket, gunnel, jinnel, twitchell, jitty, gitty, ten-foot, passage, shut. Ginnel and its variants are amongst a narrow set of dialect words which are still strong in daily life: a local knowledge of short-cuts and escape routes, yet to meet a linguistic dead-end.

In many cases, ginnels represent a tangle of lines: blurred spaces between what is safe and what is dangerous; what is natural and what isn’t; what is conserved and what is left to fall into ruin. Snickets cut nicks in the fabric of the town: routes to sneak along, cobbled channels trodden down. Moss on stone on moss on stone. Brambles tangled in barbed wire. Holly bushes poking through the dull, mottled metal of turnpike fences. Ragwort, buddleia and Japanese knotweed the ambitious upstarts amongst all the spikes and sharp edges. A quirk of planning laws mean that urban ginnels in Lancashire are managed by the countryside council, fertilising neglect and the growth of unruly nature: spaces for crime and twilight liaisons.

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