Midsummer Music
Basingstoke
About Basingstoke where our live musicians perform
String Quartets, Ceilidh and Barn Dance Bands, Jazz Bands, Party Bands and more…
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Towns, cities and regions, such as Basingstoke have an influence on the style of music, whether it is the 'English Countryside' feel of Vaughan Williams, the strength of Elgar's Victorian Malvern, or the skirl of Northumbrian Pipe tune.
About Basingstoke
The early settlement of Basingstoke is indicated by a number of archaeological sites dating from the Neolithic period and the Bronze and Iron Ages. The largest site is Winklebury Camp, an Iron Age hill fort with complex defences dating from the fourth to the first century B.C. The Roman occupation of Basingstoke is demonstrated by the site of a villa on the north bank of the River Loddon, and several other places where pottery and coins have been found. Many of the archaeological finds have been deposited at the Willis Museum. The documented history of Basingstoke begins with the Domesday Book, which lists the area as a royal manor: until the reign of John the kings of England held Basingstoke as a demesne manor. The Domesday Book also records a market in the eleventh century and mentions an important pre-Conquest church. Three mills were listed, of which two are recalled in the names of the Kingsmill and Houndsmill areas of Basingstoke. A charter of Henry III, granted in 1265 to the men of Basingstoke and their heirs, made their tenure of the manor and hundred perpetual at a fixed rent of 80. By this charter Basingstoke became a self-governing community. The first grant of a fair to Basingstoke was made by Henry VI in 1449, when an annual fair was to be held around the Chapel of the Holy Ghost from the Wednesday in Whitsun week to the following Friday. In 1551 Sir William Paulet, into whose hands the rent had just come, was elected Lord High Steward of the town; successive generations of the influential Paulet family held this office until the nineteenth century. A charter of James 1, dated 1622, gave Basingstoke a new administrative and judicial system, and a further charter of 1641 was to remain in force until the reorganization of the borough system in 1835.
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