THE performance of a seminal folk-music event is to take place again next year following rave reviews of its 2017 revival.

Peter Bellamy’s ‘The Transports’ is to be performed at a Lancashire venue, with some of folk music’s most recognisable names taking on the famed roles.

The 40th anniversary performance of the show took place in January this year, and popular demand is seeing the show put back on.

Now there is a second chance to see the famed and emotive story of 18th century exile, with the original cast reprising their roles.

The Young’uns, BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards Best Group (2016 and 2015) will join forces with fellow Folk Awards winners Nancy Kerr (Folk Singer of the Year 2015) and Greg Russell (Young Folk Award and Horizon Award).

They will be joined by ex-Bellowhead cellist Rachael McShane and celebrated trio Faustus (Paul Sartin, Benji Kirkpatrick and Saul Rose).

Sartin, another former member of the esteemed and much-missed Bellowhead, is also musical director of the project while author, storyteller and folk singer Matthew Crampton is once again the narrator and Tim Dalling (The New Rope String Band) is creative director.

The collective will take to the road in January 2018 in a 14-date tour of the ground-breaking ballad opera, stopping off at Preston Guild Hall on January 14.

Supported by Arts Council England, the show fuses together moving, inspirational music and storytelling within a vital historical and contemporary tapestry.

Bellamy, a unique singer, musician and composer, tragically took his own life in 1991 at the age of just 47, but left a treasure trove of work of which ‘The Transports’ is seen as his greatest triumph.

Complementing the tour once again will be the accompanying Parallel Lives project which aims to link the show to refugee support groups in the tour towns.

The Transports was written after Bellamy read a story in his local Norfolk newspaper about the first transport ship to Australia.

It is based on the remarkable true tale of convicts Henry Cabell and Susannah Holmes. Imprisoned for theft at Norwich Gaol prior to being transported the pair fall in love and have a son but are refused permission to marry.

As Susannah awaits transportation to Australia at the quayside her son is refused passage but a guard, taking pity on her, travels with the infant to London to appeal to Lord Sydney, Home Secretary.

Sydney orders that Cabell and Holmes be reunited, allowed to marry and transported together.