Trip to Castle Howard ~ Cook is an English Country Dance. It was published by Thompson in 1775. It was interpreted by Tom Cook in 1980 and published in Colin Hume's Website. Originally a Triple Minor this version is a proper 3 Couple Longways dance. In this dance the couples are permuted by: 312. The minor set lasts 80 bars.
Thompson writes:
Foot it 4 & change places the same back again lead down the middle up again & cast off the 1st. Man turn the 3d. Wo. & the 1st. Wo. turn the 3d. Man at the same time set 3 and 3 sides hands six half round & back again Allemand with your Partner
The music consists of 4 bar A, B, and C strains, and an 8 bar D strain, all repeated. Tom Cook appears to think the tune should be played at four counts per bar when it fits the dance instructions much better at 2 counts per bar. So he has added a great deal of extra stuff which isn't in the orignal. And no one was doing doubles in 1775. each strain is twice as long, and is still repeated.
The tune was published by Thompson with the dance; and was synthesized by Colin Hume's software.
The animation plays at 92 counts per minute normally, but the first time through the set the dance will often be slowed down so people can learn the moves more readily (no music plays during this slow set). Men are drawn as rectangles, women as ellipses. Each couple is drawn in its own color, however the border of each dancer indicates what role they currently play so the border color may change each time through the minor set.
An online description of the dance may be found here.
The dance contains the following figures: hand turn (allemande), set, circle, cast, lead, box the gnat, bentley allemande, back to back (and probably others).
If you find what you believe to be a mistake in this animation, please leave a comment on youtube explaining what you believe to be wrong. If I agree with you I shall do my best to fix it.
If you wish to link to this animation please see my comments on the perils of youtube. You may freely link to this page, of course, and that should have no problems, but use one of my redirects when linking to the youtube video itself:
https://www.upadouble.info/redirect.php?id=TripToCastleHoward
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1980 by Tom Cook. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2025 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This website is copyright © 2021-2025 by George W. Williams V My work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Most of the dances have more restrictive licensing, see my notes on copyright, the individual dance pages should mention when some rights are waived.