Tony Wales – Horsham’s popular historian

One hundred years ago today (New Year’s Eve) Tony Wales was born in Horsham.

In the following 82 years he became one of the town’s most popular historians, as well as helping to make Sussex folk songs relevant once again to a modern audience.

His musical tastes evolved while working in a record shop in Dorking (T. Andrews and Co) and also while part of the International Friendship League, where he was introduced to music from around the world.

He bought a tape recorder and started to record singers from around Sussex. This evolved into an album of local songs and ballads that he put together and was published in 1957 by Folkways in New York.

A year later he established what was the first folk club in Sussex, called the Horsham Songswappers. This was followed in 1961 with the creation of the Horsham Folk Festival.

Tony’s love of traditional music went hand in hand with local history. By 1976 he had enough material to get a book, We Wunt Be Druv, published. The title referred to the Sussex outlook that local people weren’t ready to be told what to do! It included folklore and some songs.

In subsequent years Tony had more than 40 titles published. Several were about his beloved Horsham but others featured other Sussex towns and the county’s folklore.

Tony passed away, aged 82, in 2007 but his legacy lives on through his many books and the collection of recordings he made of Sussex folk songs.

Back in 1990 his book, Sussex Customs, Curiosities and Country Lore, was published. In his introduction he provided a good summary of his legacy and what he brought with all of his books and work: “It is, I hope, an intriguing treasure chest of curious lore and unusual scraps of information, much of it of minor importance to all but those of us who find anything connected with Sussex of abiding interest.”