Summer Spirits
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It's with deep regret and reluctance that we have to announce that our Summer Spirits event for June 22 has been cancelled.
Talks
Louise Hodgson: Deep into the Land – the Beauty and the Terror
Louise Hodgson, has spent most of her life in areas of natural beauty.
She was inspired from an early age to explore what she considered to be the roots of her spirituality, hidden and revealed in nature.
With a pack-pony and greyhound, she has travelled some of the ancient track-ways of England. Louise has appeared on television twice, discussing sacred landscape related issues.
She has taught classes at a local College on 'Landscape and Spirituality' and given workshops on both the Earth Mysteries and Shamanism.
We are very pleased that Louise will be bringing her talk in which she shares her fascination with the hidden landscape and explores some of her own experiences of both light and dark sides of connecting with the landscape.
Dr Francis Young: Bogie Tales of East Anglia
Dr Young is an expert on the history of catholicism in East Anglia.
He has also written a number of works on religion and the occult, including
Witches and Witchcraft in Ely, A History of Exorcism in Catholic Christianity,
and a translation of a 16th century grimoire, The Cambridge Book of Magic.
Dr Young will be talking about his most recent publication - a reprinted edition of the earliest book devoted to East Anglian folklore, Bogie Tales of East Anglia (1891) by Margaret Helen James.
Bogie Tales is an important folklore collection which had almost entirely disappeared from view. Very few copies survive, and the book is so rare that copies have been known to sell online for over £1,500.
http://francisyoung.wordpress.com
Ed Parnell: Reading from ‘Ghostland’
Edward Parnell lives in Norfolk and has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. He was the recipient of an Escalator Award from Writers’ Centre Norwich, and in 2009 received a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship.
Edward has had a lifelong interest in ghost stories and horror films. His first book, the gothic, WWII-set The Listeners (2014), won the Rethink New Novels Prize. His new narrative non-fiction book, Ghostland, will be published by William Collins in October 2019. In it he examines the haunted landscapes that inspired writers including M. R. James, Algernon Blackwood and William Hope Hodgson – as well as trying to lay to rest his own haunted past.
Edward is also the Director of the now-biennial Wymondham Words literature festival.
Ghostland’ is a narrative non-fiction book about how the British landscape has influenced various writers, filmmakers and artists whose work deals with the weird and the eerie. Ed says: "I grew up in the Fens, so quite sizeable amounts of the book are concerned with the area. M. R. James features strongly through the core of the book, but other Fenland writers and works include John Gordon and the brilliant ‘House on the Brink’, R. H. Malden and Lucy Boston, as well as diversions into Graham Swift’s ‘Waterland’, which has a particular connection to my own life as my grandfather was a Fenland lock-keeper."
Performance
Christine Pike: Live readings of tales of the supernatural and macabre
Christine is a lifelong fan of Gothic fiction and is the inspiration behind Lady Chillers - a touring project created to revive the works of forgotten women authors of ghost stories in atmospheric performed readings.
Find out more
Sharron Kraus - Live acoustic set
Sharron Kraus is a singer of folk songs, a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist whose solo work and collaborations offer a dark and subversive take on traditional music. As well as drawing on the folk traditions of England and Appalachia, her music is influenced by gothic literature, surrealism, myth and magick. Her songs tell intricate tales of rootless souls, dark secrets and earthly joys, the lyrics plucked as sonorously as her acoustic guitar.
Sharron has been featured in The Wire, fRoots, Uncut, The Sound Projector and Dirty Linen, and is one of the musicians focused on in Jeanette Leech’s Seasons They Change: The Story of Acid, Psych and Experimental Folk. She has appeared on Radio 3’s ‘The Verb’, and recorded sessions for BBC Radio Scotland, BBC Radio Shropshire, Freakzone on Radio 6, and independent radio stations across the US.
Sharron’s latest album, ‘Joy’s Reflection is Sorrow’, is released on Sunstone Records.
Film
FILM: Penda's Fen (1974) Writer: David Rudkin Dir. Alan Clarke
Set against the backdrop of the Malvern Hills, Penda's Fen has become a classic of Folk Horror television.
An adolescent parson's son must question everything he believes and holds true: his religion, his sexuality, his family, in order to grow and develop into an adult.
This is set against a country and a landscape which is also uncertain how it can move from the past to the present. Angels, Edward Elgar and King Penda himself all make appearances in this made-for-television drama, which after 45 years remains powerful and challenging.
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Saturday June 22 2pm– 10pm
The Space Upstairs, Priory Centre, Downham Market, Norfolk
It's with deep regret and reluctance that we have to announce that our Summer Spirits event for June 22 has been cancelled.
Where is Downham Market?
Downham Market is in West Norfolk, and is conveniently located on the A10.
Travel from London by train takes only 90 minutes and from Cambridge just 35 minutes.
The Space Upstairs is in the Priory Centre in the centre of town, opposite Tesco and in the same building as the public library.
It's a 10 minute walk from the train station. The venue is fully accessible.
There will be a bar and vegan cakes supplied by Audrey's.
Coming by car?
Downham Market is at the junction of the A10, and the A1122.
It's a simple 45-minute drive from Cambridge, Norwich or Peterborough.
There is substantial free car parking in the town, including Paradise Road Car Park, and the Discover Downham Centre in Priory Road.
Coming from London/Cambridge by train?
Downham Market is on the main train line from London
King’s Cross to King’s Lynn. It takes only 80 minutes (approximately), or only 35 minutes from Cambridge.
Don’t worry – Summmer Spirits will end by 22.00!
The last train back to London leaves at 22.41 and the last train to King's Lynn leaves at 23.38.
(train times correct at time of going to press, please check before travelling)