Yorkshire's Onward Christian Soldiers writer celebrated in incredible life-story show
His incredible life was filled with other amazing achievements but he has been largely forgotten, until now.
A new touring show, about to get its official world premier in his former Wakefield parish of Horbury - buy tickets here - will reveal how he was a top five best-selling novelist; the writer of what is still the go-to book on werewolves and inspired Bram Stoker to write Dracula. He was also a storyteller of the Norse Myths of Iceland and even featured in a Sherlock Holmes novel as the detective’s godfather.
In real life he married Horbury mill worker Grace Taylor, after educating her in society etiquette - their story was used by George Bernard Shaw as the basis for his bestseller Pygmalion, which was made into the Hollywood musical My Fair Lady.
But the curate said the most important thing he ever did was to save a huge collection of folk songs from Devon and Cornwall, where he was originally from.
Some of those songs, interweaved with anecdotes from his own astonishing life and stories from his books will mark the centenary of his death in a new touring show called Ghosts, Werewolves and Countryfolk.
It stars six-time BBC Folk Awards nominee Jim Causley and Miranda Sykes, of award-winning Show of Hands and Yorkshire-based Daphne’s Flight, and is narrated by John Palmer, director of the critically-acclaimed Vaughan Williams anniversary From Pub to Pulpit Cathedral tour,
The premier will be at Horbury Working Members Club on Friday, May 17, before it goes on a 25-date national tour.
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It will launch Whit Weekend long events - May 17 to 19 - including celebratory exhibitions and activities, plus a church parade on the Sunday, with hopes of 1,000 people turning up to sing Onward Christian Soldiers, re-enacting the first time it was sung on WhitSunday 1865. He wrote it for the annual school procession. For more information about 2024 Whit Weekend events in Horbury visit horburychurch.com/activities/whitwalk.
Father Christopher Johnson, vicar of St Peter’s Horbury, said: “The whole town has come together to honour this remarkable man and there are activities involving schoolchildren and families alongside the set piece events. It will be a very exciting weekend”.
Baring Gould died in January 1924, the son of the Lord of the Manor of Lew Trenchard near Okehampton. He became a vicar in Yorkshire, Essex and Devon and devoted his time to his love of folk music, country traditions and the macabre.