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The Larks of Dean were composers, singers and instrumentalists, linked to Goodshaw Baptist Chapel and active from 1750 -1860.

Fifty books of their music have survived, much of it attributed to local composers. It includes secular and religious music, including over 1,000 psalm and hymn tunes.

Rossendale poet Edwin Waugh wrote of the Larks of Dean ‘Up in the Forest of Rossendale … there is a little, lone valley, a green cup in the mountains, called Dean.

The inhabitants of this valley are so notable for their love of music that they are known all through the vales of Rossendale as ‘Th’Deighn Layrocks’. The Larks of Dean legacy includes performance of their music in Goodshaw Chapel every July, and a ‘Larks of Dean Quire’ in Bury.

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