The North Fold Players' songbook was bound in green cloth and held together at the spine with linen tape. Its printed pages offered a modest repertoire for small companies. The writing around them supplied something more particular: the memory of performances in rooms where a wing, a doorway or a serviceable curtain could not be assumed.
Beside one song, a note tells a performer to wait until the table is clear. Beside another, a pencilled arrow marks the point at which the audience would first see a character entering from the kitchen. These instructions are difficult to understand without imagining the room, but were probably obvious to the people who wrote them.
Stage manager Olive Renn used different pencils for successive productions. Blue marks concern the hall at North Fold; red ones concern a shorter programme taken to neighbouring rooms. The colours prevented a useful instruction for one building from becoming an inconvenient instruction in another. Erasing everything would have destroyed work that might be needed again.
The book also records cuts. A long verse was omitted when a singer could not sustain it comfortably. An introduction was shortened because moving a screen took less time after its wheels were repaired. What looks on the page like a musical decision sometimes began with a change in furniture or a repair to equipment.
The company's performances were remembered as informal evenings. The songbook reveals how much care supported that impression. Ease for an audience was achieved through notes, repeated attempts and a practical respect for the limits of a particular room. The taped spine preserved that effort long after the programmes had ceased to explain it.