Current Lord Mayor's Piper
The current Lord Mayor's Piper is David Bailey; he has been Piper to the Lord Mayor of Newcastle for over twenty years.
David is regularly called upon to offer a traditional welcome to visiting dignitaries from home and abroad, including Her Majesty The Queen and other members of the Royal Family.
History of the Role
This custom of the Lord Mayor appointing an official piper goes back several centuries and from a very early period there are Corporation records of payments to the Waits.
Waits in feudal times times were 'minstrel-watchmen' who were employed in castles throughout the country. When such customs declined the players formed themselves into fellowships and guilds. In Newcastle they were a corporate body with the same rights and privileges as the freemen. There is no record of them during the Civil War but they emerge again after the restoration.
One such record of 1655 shows that the Corporation provided salaries for five Waits as well as providing their instruments and cloaks. On 18th September 1677 they were granted a petition for the renewal of ther privileges by Sir Ralph Carr, who was then the Mayor of Newcastle. In the 'charter' the Waits appointed themselves 'a fellowship with perpetual succession'. This gave them a virtual monopoly on musical activity in the City. They were alloted a meeting house in one of the small towers on the town wall between Pilgrim Street Gate and Carliol Tower and were provided with their liveries of blue cloaks and cocked hats.
On Civic occasions, such as the election of a new Mayor, the pipers would herald the arrival and departure of the Mayor, Sheriff and Aldermen. They would attend and play on festival Sundays and Guild days and would play the Mayor home from church and the Guildhall. As a company and servants of the Corporation they ceased to exist about the beginning of this century.
More recently, and for the duration of the Newcastle Festival of 1971, the Lord Mayor once again appointed an official piper. Then in 1984, when Arthur Stabler was Lord Mayor, the City was presented with an ivory and silver set of Northumbrian pipes by Newcastle Breweries, which was celebrating its centenary.
The pipes were commissioned from master craftsman David Burleigh of Longframlington. Councillor Stabler kept his promise to engage a piper to play the new pipes and so the tradition has continued.