If the North East is typical of other English regions, then the following propositions will have to be severely modified or given up: that there was a distinct ‘break’ between pre-industrial and industrial workers’ culture; that concert hall was a London phenomenon; that it originated mainly from petit-bourgeois ‘free-and-eases’; and that it reached its peak in Edwardian England, as music hall. Further, I will contend that ‘leisure’ and ‘work’ cannot rationally be separated in the study of workers’ culture, that social historians and students of culture need each other and that the concept of ‘folk song’ does more harm than good.