The spark that initiated this website was finding my Turville tapes during a clear-out of some old audio cassettes.
At the age of fourteen I started working at Idlecombe Farm at weekends, helping Len. We had a lot in common - a love of nature and folk music and I developed a fondness for the farm and for the Harman family. At that time my father worked for a company that manufactured tape recorders, and he used to bring home prototypes and competitors' products that I usually commandeered. Len allowed me to bring one of these tape recorders to the club to record evenings at the Club from a front row seat.
Having rediscovered the tapes and believing that the Harman family might appreciate them, I emailed the farm to find out where I could contact Len's sons. I was shocked to hear back from Mark's partner Alice Nuttgens that he had died three years previously, and Ivan before that, both aged only 51.
Not knowing quite what to do with the tapes I broached the idea with Alice of setting up this web site as a tribute to Len and family, and met with an encouraging response. So it snowballed from there. What started as a solo venture has become a team project, and I am very grateful to all the participants.
I would like to thank Alice Nuttgens for the material and contacts she provided and the time she generously put aside to meet me and show me around the farm. Janis Harman and Keir Harman for their enthusiasm and kind hospitality and for the time they devoted to going through their archive material, extracting information from Len's diaries and Janis's rewrites of some of my text. To Ashley Preston for his fabulous stereo recordings and Rodney and Valmai Pickett for their archive material and the help they gave Janis with the historical information of the Club history and the Harman family. Peter Brown for his fine emails and archive material. To Geoff Duckworth for his fabulous photographs, and for permission to display them - sorry it took so long to locate you! And to the others – you know who you are – who have sent me helpful emails and have tried to help identify the unknown singers in the recording clips and photos, a BIG thank you.
One person deserves to be singled out for special thanks. He has worked with me tirelessly from the start, has telephoned me, met me at a halfway house and prior to the launch of this site sent me no less than 76 emails! He has regained contacts with previous singers and club-goers, passed on archive material, come up with new leads, edited my writings, checked out the web site in its various stages of development and liaised with the Henley Standard. Mr Enthusiasm himself, David Coxell.
However the person I would like to thank most of all is the man who started it all. Supported by his family, he worked harder than most people realise to give us countless evenings of first class entertainment over a twenty five year period. Always unassuming, his eccentric charm and humour brightened our lives. Len Harman, thank you.
And me? I now live in Somerset, married with three daughters. I still share Len's love of music and wildlife. Besides being an optician, I also make a spectacle of myself playing keyboards in a 50's/60's rock 'n' roll band.
Jeremy Riches, November 2006
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