Fallen Echoes was a project, funded by the County Durham Community Foundation, which allowed young people to connect with local war heritage by taking part in activities that help them produce a musical work entitled, Fallen Echoes.
The workshop activities took place in October and November 2018.
Some of our young people worked with a lyricist to create the words to go alongside the music piece. They chose The Bombardment of the Hartlepools as a local event that they wished to research and attempt to bring alive for a modern audience.
Over 1000 young people from Hartlepool heard the music in rehearsal and in live performance.
They performed the work as part of a larger WW1 commemoration event in Hartlepoool, in front of approximately 700 audience members witnessed the piece, some of whom were direct descendents of those who were affected by the tragic and inspiring events of December 14th, 1914.
The music work is freely available for primary schools to use in assemblies and curriculum work, as well as a way to talk about local history and how war affects real people.
We hope that this will encourage young people to think more deeply about how war affects people and how, when commemorarting through Remembrance events, we show respect and gratitude to those who have sacrificed so much.
Our thanks go to County Durham Community Foundation for supporting the project.
The project was Enter CIC’s contribution to the #iwill campaign.
Fallen Echoes – The Spirit of the Hartlepools
| The clocks tick tocked.
Little heartbeats by the bed. The peace of morning locked Inside their dreamy heads. Soon a dawning broke Muted by the mist And The Hartlepools awoke To a cold December kiss. Clocks ticked on past barking dogs Past dads off now to toil Past the fires with crackling logs Helping kettles boil All eyes on milk and clocks Time for daughters and sons To school in pants and frocks As they loaded up the guns Seen through misted eyes A firework out at sea And through the grey disguise Came Death so merrily The clocks stopped. Heugh and Lighthouse did not yield So history was made The only Great War Battlefield On British soil was laid You think that shells fell from the skies As if like iron rain? Fired with range of seven miles In two miles reached their aim Houses quaked with bricks and bone Heugh and all stood strong As fathers pulled their kin from home Away from Death’s old song They fled to fields of quiet rest On trains and buses crammed The Heugh and Lighthouse did their best As The Hartlepools were slammed |
And then the howls were lessened
‘Til silence broke the hate And people counted blessings Bodies and their fate Gone was Death’s dark melody But songs of sorrow loomed Yet a promise there will ever be Honour for the doomed The Hartlepools were wounded Now rally cries and more Across the Empire sounded To enlist against the foe The Hartlepools raised all alike And raised a fortune, too So there would never be a strike ‘Gainst likes of me and you Now if you think that history Is only fit for fools Let it be no mystery What befell The Hartlepools The clocks stopped. But time moved on And in your flesh and blood Lives the spirit bravely won Of the strong and of the good. And if you thought museums were About the dead and gone Look inside, there’s spirit there Where you thought there might be none So, let me close as night draws in And morning is a dream By saying look, look well within You are not what you might seem You are not some worthless soul But a shining, priceless jewel Made with strength, made with soul Made in Hartlepool. |
Images inspired by the theme, Fallen Echoes.
