Bouncing Back Into The Spotlight
You have to go back over 30 years to find the last time that the name of Askern Colliery Band featured on the winners’ board at the Yorkshire Regional Championships. 1987 to be precise, when the late Graham O’Connor took the band to first place in the Second Section, playing ‘The Margam Stones’.
The intervening years have been hard on the band, as players and engagements slowly dwindled until the band almost disappeared from the radar altogether in the early 2000s. Following the closure of the village pit in late 1991, it was almost was almost a case of ‘the writing on the wall. The band and its assets were placed into the trusteeship of the Askern Miners’ Welfare Club in early 1992 and thereafter it was just a handful of players who managed to meet in their upstairs rooms from time to time that kept the music alive.
It was the circulation of players around the other local bands that helped keep a light on in the gloom, until around 2014 when Doncaster’s premier brass band, the Hatfield Band, approached the residual Askern group with a merger proposal that would help to preserve the futures and histories of both bands. Playing under the Hatfield name, the band rehearsed in Askern and incrementally pooled resources and assets culminating in a formal merger as ‘Hatfield and Askern Colliery Band’ that was ratified in May 2018, thus pulling together the musical core of two South Yorkshire pit villages separated only by eight miles and a few fields and rivers.
Given the longstanding support of Hatfield Town Council, and under the leadership of Stan Lippeatt, Hatfield Band managed to gather a few contest prizes in the years to 2018, when they were unceremoniously relegated from the Championship Section after coming 13th in the Area contest. Since then, the path has been one toward restoration of status and the band has collected a 5th in the Senior Cup at the 2018 Spring Festival, a 3rd place in Brass at the Guild (Preston) in January 2019 and lately, a 1st place in the NEMBBA Contest on 24 February 2019, when airing the test piece for this year’s Area Contest, with soprano Mike Kilmartin also scooping the soloist prize on the day.
Building this momentum has generated a sound feel-good factor amongst the players. There is still a final polish to be applied this week, but there is no doubt that the name of Askern Colliery Band is back in the spotlight, the Phoenix is rising, and the might of Hatfield and Askern Colliery Band will be striving for top spot and another notch on the honours board tomorrow at Huddersfield Town Hall.
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