Cottage Industry

Please scroll down to listen to MP3 files of some of our music. 

Cottage Industry are a  4 piece ceilidh & barn dance band from Dorset specialising in song and dance from England, Ireland & Scotland plus medieval banquets, shanty sessions and Dorset, St. Patrick's & Burns' evenings.  Cottage Industry were established in 1976, since when the band has been on one long rollercoaster of a tour!  Gigs across the country have included theatres, castles, country mansions, hotels, boats, clubs and pubs - and leaky barns!  It also seems like almost every village hall in Dorset & Hampshire has echoed to the sound of the band's driving jigs & reels!  Highlights of the past 30 years have included a 'medieval banquet' broadcast live from the BBC studios in Southampton and playing aboard a schooner owner by an exiled Cuban goldminer - with a crew of 10 Swedish girls! 

Over the years the band has done quite a lot of recording - starting in about 1978 in a 4 track garage studio owned by photographer Roger Holman, to BBC Maida Vale Studios in 1981 & 1982 which produced a release "We're All for Swanage", a song about Swanage Railway that made us famous on TV and radio - well, for about half-an-hour anyway!  In recent years Cottage Industry have recorded in Peter Aston's 16 track studio. 

Cottage Industry are available for engagements in England & Wales.  A quick way to check our availability is to click on "Bookings" in the left hand menu.  As Peter Aston is a member of the UK Musicians' Union, engagements carry automatic public liability insurance cover of £10 million.  

In 2006 our original fiddler, Peter Birnie, announced his retirement from the band as he moved on to, as he put it, "new, magnificant projects!"   Peter had been in the band since the start in the mid-1970s (apart from during an extended trip to India) and, even before then, he and I had appeared as a duo called "The Long and the Short of It".  We made our debut as a duo at the King Charles pub on Poole Quay where we received the princely payment of £8 a night between us!  Our thanks and very best wishes go out to Peter in his retirement; we'll certainly miss his unique style of fiddling and, particularly, his willingness and ability to busk anything from jigs & reels to rock 'n' roll and from medieval set dances to the Can-Can - thank you Peter! 

We're delighted to now have on board fiddle maestro Steve Faulkner to provide a high-octane lead for our ceilidh dances and sensitive backing for our songs.  

Back in 2005 we were honoured to play at Poole Lighthouse as part of the AMPfest concert in memory of our original bass player, Eric Bird, who had sadly died. There is a review of our part in the concert. AMP is the Access to Music Project based in Poole which provides opportunities to learn or re-learn and perform music - often for people who have had disabling illnesses or accidents. Eric had been a leading light in AMP during his years of "forgetfulness" with encephalitis.  Congratulations to the AMP Project on being presented with the 2007 East Dorset District Council Community Service Award in the "Contribution to Culture" category, recognition for the excellent and supportive work undertaken by AMP over several years.  

You can visit Eric's memorial pages.

A long-standing friend of ours, a well-known folk fiddler and an all-round good egg is Richard (Titch) Roberts who in recent years has forged a formidable reputation as Sonic Violins, building top quality electro-acoustic violins, violas and cellos for the likes of Dave Swarbrick (Fairport Convention), Phil Beer (Show of Hands) and Pete Birnie (formerly of Cottage Industry).  If you need a wonderful instrument to help express your own music then visit Sonic Violins by clicking here  

The Cottage Industry Sampler:
(Song samples below - the full cd is available, please send us an email)
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Song Title			MP3
Horses Brawl (468Kb)
King of the Fairies/High Germany/Drowsy Maggie (599Kb)
Athol Highlanders/Gary Owen (491Kb)
Galway City/Spanish Ladies (484Kb)