Annotation:Trip to Bermonsey Spa (A)
X:1 T:Trip to Bermonsey Spa, A M:2/4 L:1/8 R:Country Dance N:Under section of "Dances, 1786". B:Samuel, Ann & Peter Thompson - Compleat Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances, vol. 5 (1788, p. 27) N:" As they are Perform'd at Court, Bath and all Publick Assemblys ." Z:AK/Fiddler's Companion K:D f|e/d/e/f/ df|e/d/e/f/ dA|BAGF|[CE][C/E/][C/E/] [CE]f| e/d/e/f/ df|e/d/e/f/ dA|B/c/d/e/ dc|d/A/F/A/ D:| |:a|g/f/g/a/ fa|g/f/g/a/ fa|bagf|[c/e/][c/e/][ce] [ce]f| e/d/e/f/ df|f/e/g/e/ dA|B/c/d/e/ fe|dd/d/ d:|]
TRIP TO BERMONDSEY SPA. English, Country Dance Tune (2/4 time). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The proprietor of Bermondsey Spa was Thomas Keyse (1722–1800), an English still-life painter. Wikipedia records:
About 1770 Keyse opened a tea-garden in Bermondsey, then a suburb of London, where a chalybeate spring had been found, and which became known as the Bermondsey Spa. Here, with other attractions, Keyse kept a permanent exhibition of his own drawings. Obtaining a music license, he made the gardens an imitation of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, open in the evening during the summer months, and provided fireworks, including a set-piece of the siege of Gibraltar, constructed and designed by Keyse himself.
Keyse died at his gardens 8 February 1800, in his seventy-ninth year. The gardens remained open for about five years longer, and gave their name to the Spa Road, Bermondsey/
"Trip to Bermontsey [sic] Spa" was entered in the mid-19th century music manuscript of William Winter (1774-1861), a shoemaker and violin player who lived in West Bagborough in Somerset, southwest England.
