Harbour Folk Band: Close to the Wind

I know this song from Fairport Convention, but this version is by the Harbour Folk Band. They turn out to be the house band of The Irishman, a pub in Stavanger, Norway.

Close to the Wind was written by Stuart Marson and the story it tells is based in fact.

The Culworth village website tells the story of the Culworth Gang:

Writing in 1841, Alfred Beasley sets the scene for what [John] Smith’s move to the village would bring: 

"In the lovely undulating countryside of the southwest corner of Northamptonshire, seven miles from Banbury, lies the quiet village of Culworth. The long attractive street with its houses of contrasting dark and light bands of stone makes a pleasing picture. Times were not always so quiet for the inhabitants of Culworth, for in the latter part of the 18th century a band of robbers had their headquarters in the village." 

At its largest, the gang consisted of about fifteen individuals, although membership varied and several died off across the period of the gang’s existence. They had first come together for poaching, but then they moved on to housebreaking and highway robbery.  

And also of their deaths in Northampton:

At 10 a.m. in the morning of Aug. 4th, 1787, a mournful procession made its way from the county prison at Northampton along the Kettering road to the gallows, (now the area in Northampton known as The Racecourse). The older John Smith, aged 53, and the two  younger  men, Law and Pettipher, travelled in one cart, whilst Bowers, aged 36, and two other criminals (David Coe and John Hulbert) went in the other tumbril. 

On reaching the place of execution, on the corner of the race course, opposite the White Elephant public house (which still stands), they found a huge crowd of 5,000 awaited them. 

The hangings took place at mid-day, when each man was “launched into eternity,” to use the contemporary euphemism. A rope was put around each man’s neck, which was fixed to a cross beam, as they stood up in their cart. Then the signal would be given by a person dropping a hat and the cart would be driven off, leaving the man to hang a few feet from the ground.

The racecourse closed in the Edwardian era but remains as an open space near the centre of the town.