The Remembrance Sunday celebration in Dagenham will see the final appearance of the Dagenham Girl Pipers after nearly a century. Recently, there has been much less interest among young girls in joining the band. The pipers were founded in 1930 by the Rev Joseph Waddington Graves, Minister of Dagenham’s Osborne Hall congregational church. The band members were only young girls at school (average age 14), at a time when playing the pipes was a male-dominated pastime. The first performance was for the girls’ families. But along came the press, local and national, including a film crew, for cinema newsreels. Their fame began to spread. Within two years, the band were the stars of the Lord Mayor of London’s show, performing before huge crowds. By 1935, they were performing in front of the King and Queen of Belgium at the Ghent Flower Show. They went on to play at the Menin...
I’m afraid this isn’t one of our four free articles available in full, which are set out in the first two rows of the ‘Magazine’ page.
Please click here to find them.
To buy a digital version of this issue for just £2.99, click here
