St Mary's Church in Micheldever has hosted an evening of literature in memory of the Swing Riots.

A packed audience at St. Mary’s on Saturday, June 22 was entertained by a rich mix of poetry and prose along with folk music from the era of Captain Swing and the rural riots in his name in the 1820s.

Presented by the English Project as part of its bicentenary commemoration of the riots by farm workers across Hampshire and the south of England, the show featured major poems such as ‘Micheldever’ by J.R.Ackerley.

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The poem recounts the story of Henry Cook, the youngest rioter to be executed who was from Micheldever. ‘The Riot’ by Hannah More was also read, in which two impoverished men debate whether or not they should set out on a path of destruction.
 

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Performed by actors Sam Collings and Nigel Bradshaw and backed up by two professors from the University of Winchester, Christopher Mulvey and Bill Lucas, the show combined a mix of serious and light-hearted material – especially from the folk singing of members of the Waynflete singers Susan Millin, John Lunt and Catherine Tucker.

Added into the mix were passages from William Cobbett’s famous Rural Rides, in which he reflected on how much the conditions in the English rural counties had changed as a result of enclosures and the increasingly intrusive buying up of farms by wealthy financiers from London.

“This was the first outing of A Message to Micheldever,” explained Edward Fennell, the producer, “and we are very encouraged by how well it has been received. With minor adaptations we feel that it could go very well across many of the county’s communities. Almost anywhere which had a riot – and there were seventy of them – would find it relevant.”

The Swing Riots took place in the Autumn of 1830 and involved thousands of men across almost every part of Hampshire. The riots were put down vigorously by the Duke of Wellington, then a Lord Lieutenant, and a Grand Assize was held in the Great Hall in Winchester which sentenced hundreds of men to death or transportation to Australia.