About

Mysteries remain. What happened to Blanche Payling? What happened to May May Start and all the other Espérance girls? The dynamics of learning and self-organising at the heart of the Espérance Club have been undervalued to date, but hopefully a new picture can now begin to emerge, building a fuller picture of this period of English cultural history.

You can help. Where you see something interesting or that has been left out, please send us information or a comment. Your engagement with this website plays its own role in the re-writing of history.

Like John Barley Corn, stories can get up again and 'sore surprise' us all.

A champion of working-class women, Mary Neal’s story deserves to come out of the shadows’. Shirley Collins MBE, President of the English Folk Dance and Song Society.