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Fivepenny Piece was a five-piece folk music band formed in 1967 around Ashton-under-Lyne and Stalybridge in Tameside, England. The band met and performed on Wednesday nights at Ashton's Broadoak Hotel, which gave them their original name The Wednesday Folk.
Many of their mostly self-penned songs reflected their roots, using Lancashire dialect, with references to the mining and weaving trades, the factory, and the Lancashire characters who lived in the area. But there was another side to the group's music, perhaps best described as more pop music-oriented. The band's music is most often categorised as folk music.
The original personnel were John Meeks (born 24 March 1937, Stalybridge, Cheshire) (guitar, vocals); John's sister Lynda Jane Meeks (1 August 1947, Stalybridge – 22 January 2013) (vocals); brothers George Radcliffe (9 August 1937, Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire – 2002) (bass guitar, vocals) and Colin Radcliffe (19 January 1934, Ashton-under-Lyne – 2025) (guitar, vocals); and Eddie Crotty (24 February 1942, Stalybridge – 11 April 2009) (guitar, vocals). John Meeks and Colin Radcliffe wrote most of their best-known songs, although Crotty also penned several. The unofficial sixth member of the band was the drummer Phil Barlow, who accompanied them in many of their concerts and on their albums.
During the band's 1970s heyday they released over a dozen albums for EMI and then Philips Records, and reached the Top 10 in the UK Albums Chart with their LP King Cotton. They performed multiple times on national television, and had their own BBC Television series, The Fivepenny Piece Show.
By the early 1980s the group had reached an impasse, and John Meeks' departure was followed soon afterwards by Lynda Meeks. With John's replacement Trevor Chance (born 1 March 1942, Gilsland, Cumberland) and Andrea Mullins (formerly of the Caravelles), the band continued until 1985 when they broke up.
The group reformed in the mid-1990s, and played occasional gigs with various personnel, including the Lancashire folk singer and comedian Bernard Wrigley and Pete Brew. Crotty and George Radcliffe continued to play in the band, along with Mullins. Salford-born guitarist and vocalist Paul Johnston joined the band in the late 1990s as they continued to perform, their final show being at the Grand Theatre in Lancaster around 2004.
George Radcliffe ran the 'Star Inn' pub in Ashton-under-Lyne in the early 1980s and died at the end of 2002, and Eddie Crotty, the band's only remaining original member, died of a heart attack in hospital on 11 April 2009, aged 67, after being ill for the previous nine years. Lynda Jane Meeks died from cancer on 22 January 2013, aged 67 years, at the Christie Hospital in Manchester. Tameside Advertiser, 31 January 2013, p. 44 Colin Radcliffe died in 2025, after living in retirement in Wales, leaving John Meeks the sole surviving original member of the group.
For a while in the 1970s the group had a weekly interlude spot on the BBC programme That's Life! with Esther Rantzen.
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