Every month Jeremy kindly personally writes a new episode for thisisholbech.co.uk. This month we present...

Sponsered by 'A Neat Little Town' by Jeremy Satherley.

1. Episode 1 - Holbeach History
2. Episode 2 - No more leaves on the line, at Holbeach Station
3. Episode 3 - Shall We Dance - for 12 hours non-stop?
4. Episode 4 - Keeping the wheels of Holbeach turning
5. Episode 5 - The Holbeach card players

Episode 3 - Shall We Dance - for 12 hours non-stop?

One visit to the Tuesday tea dance at the Women's Institute Hall in Park Road is enough to convince you that the world of traditional ballroom dancing is far from dead in Holbeach. Under the watchful eye of the lady's portrait who provided the Hall in the first place, Mrs Frances Ethel Carter, not to mention the matching photo of her husband Herbert, who funded the park across the road, couples rotate dutifully in time to the music, provided with panache up on stage by George (of the well-known duet 'Pageo') and his several keyboards. Soon the Beat Barn Dance comes to an end, and Len and Sylvia come round with the tea trolley and Bourbon biscuits. After refreshments and a huge raffle which ensures hardly anyone goes away empty-handed, whether it's a box of Carmen rollers or six fresh eggs, it's time for George's wife Pat to regale us past the interval and beyond with 'Play To Me Gipsy', a song that made the hit parade in 1934.'Beside your ca-ra-van, the camp fire bright, I'll be your vaga-bond, just for to-night.' And as she sweetly sings on, like an Evelyn Laye or Vera Lynn of yore, suddenly it's 75 years ago again, and our thoughts go back to a dancing marathon that took place just a few doors up the road, and put Holbeach on the map as somewhere more'n joost a place to grow good spuds, loike.

Non-stop dance music on cups of Oxo, 1931

'Bye Bye Blues', 'Falling in Love Again', 'Happy Days Are Here Again', 'Tip-Toe Through the Tulips', 'Body and Soul', 'On a Little Balcony in Spain': all these popular tunes of the period and many more were not just the preserve of Bert Ambrose or Jack Payne broadcasting them over the airwaves nightly from London's nightspots or the BBC studios. They were also well within the capabilities and repertoire of an unemployed Holbeach warehouseman, when he set out to break the world record for non-stop playing at the Park Hall one Saturday in January 1931.

The inter-war years, particularly the 20s and early 30s, were dance-crazy, and up until 1931, the record for non-stop playing stood at 11 hours, established by Harry Thorlby's band at the Strand Café, Edinburgh. In common with many others during the Depression, thirty-one-year-old Len Hall was out of work during the day. But in the leisure hours he ran a dance band which fulfilled many local engagements. Only the night before his record attempt, the band had been playing at Whaplode from 7 p.m. until midnight, while the following week they were booked up every evening for six hours a night. But Len was more than ready to meet the challenge, having 'trained' on nothing but toast for three days before the event!

Eileen tangoes with the RAC Scout

The band, with Len at the piano, carpenter W Tatam on banjo, Long Sutton veg grower H Howes playing drums and chauffeur H Cook wielding the violin, assembled at Park Hall on the Saturday morning, and with sweet shop owner C Blackbourn officiating as timekeeper, the ensemble began playing at 11 a.m. First on the floor were 14-year-old Eileen Keight, daughter of the landlord and landlady of the Talbot Hotel (where the Card Gallery shop is now situated), and her partner Mary Hall, Len's younger sister. They danced together until 5.20 p.m., when Mary had to go to work at the Hippodrome cinema (where incidentally, they were showing Loose Ends, starring Owen Nares -'a down-and-out, embittered man who is rescued from the depths'- and Edna Best), and Eileen changed partners to Arthur Hallam, the RAC Scout, whose job it was, in a smart blue uniform with peaked cap, jodhpurs and leggings, to direct traffic at the fiveways cross roads in the days when there were no traffic lights at these junctions. This duo tangoed, foxtrotted and waltzed until 8 p.m., when Eileen retired after nine hours. Another couple, Miss L Cox and Mr F Larrington, managed a creditable six hours. One wonders whether, during this exhausting marathon, the girls had the dedication or energy to observe the etiquette recommended to them in Victor Silvester's Ballroom Dancing manual: 'Never attempt in any way to lead or guide your partner - submit yourself entirely to him. Stiff knees and bent knees look frightfully ugly - try to strike the happy medium. Be perfectly natural; don't try and ape someone else or get an affected hold - people only laugh at you.' And, 'If you want to talk, sit it out.'

600 on the floor

Meanwhile, the band played on, fortified by cups of Oxo passed to them by friends, while Len himself survived on a mere cup of water. During the afternoon his left wrist started to give out, so for a short spell he changed places with Howes and beat the drums with his right hand while his left wrist was being bandaged. As word got around the town, more and more people came in to watch progress. Park Hall must have had its best day ever, for with admission at 1/6 (12˝p) for dancers and 6d (2˝p) for spectators, the 800 who visited the dance floor throughout the day must have set the till permanently ringing. After the 10.05 p.m. deadline for breaking Thorlby's record had been successfully passed, excitement became intense, and there were still 600 on the floor (one wonders what present-day fire regulations or Health and Safety would have made of this), making it 'almost impossible to dance', when Len and his band retired to rousing cheers at 11 p.m.

'World records are not broken very easily in these days,' enthused the Spalding Guardian afterwards, 'and Holbeach, go-ahead little Fenland town as it is, seems one of the last places where one would expect to find a world record breaker.'

But Holbeach has been surprising the world fairly regularly ever since. Only the following year for instance, Len's brother Ned - father of that delightful man John who, until the late 1990s, assured you of a warm welcome, pencil behind his ear at the ready, at Hooks hardware shop on the corner of Edinburgh Walk - climbed the spire of Holbeach Church for a bet, aided possibly by a little lubrication from the Chequers across the road. And as for Eileen Keight, she went for a three-mile walk on the day after the dance!