Midsummer Music

   Crawley   

About   Crawley  where our live musicians perform

   Covering Party Bands, String Quartets, Barn Dance / Ceilidh and Jazz   

Towns, cities and regions, such as   Crawley  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  Crawley   

Crawley began as a Saxon village. In Saxon times a huge forest called the Weald covered most of Sussex. Crawley was once Craw leah, which means crow wood. Crawley was a small village but it lay on an important road between London and the coast. Because of its position Crawley grew into a small town by the 13th century. From 1202 there was a weekly market in Crawley every Friday. (In those days there were few shops and if you wished to buy or sell goods you had to go to a market). From 1279 there was also an annual fair in Crawley on 28 August. In the Middle Ages fairs were similar to markets but they were held only once a year. The Crawley fair attracted buyers and sellers from all over Sussex and Surrey. There would have been some craftsmen such as brewers, bakers, blacksmiths and carpenters in Crawley, but it was essentially an agricultural settlement. Men would farm the fields around Crawley. At the market and fair the main goods on sale were food and livestock. Crawley only had a population of several hundred people but settlements were tiny in those days. An average village had only 100 or 150 inhabitants. With a few hundred people Crawley was just large enough to be considered a town. The parish church in old Crawley dates mainly from the 14th and 15th centuries. For centuries Crawley was little more than a large village. In the 18th century it grew a little more. In 1770 the road from London to Brighton was made a turnpike. That means a private company took it over and paid for its maintenance and in return they charged travelers a toll. In the late 18th century Brighton began to develop as a seaside resort and lots of people from London traveled there by stagecoach. (The journey lasted one day). Crawley was at the mid point of the journey and began to develop as a stagecoaching town. But it was still very small. In 1800 Crawley and the adjacent villages, on the site of what is now the Borough of Crawley still only had a combined population of about 2,000.

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