Music from the Age of Richard III and the early Tudors will be performed by The York Waits at Worcester's Huntingdon Hall.

But who are the York Waits? Well, they are certainly nothing to do with people hanging about at northern bus stops.

A spokesman said: "The York Waits take their name from the ancient city band of York, the earliest evidence for which we find in 14th century records. From medieval times up to the early 19th century, every British town and city of any note had a band of ‘waits’. Before they turned to music full time the waits had been night watchmen and, although their guard duties diminished, they continued to keep the night watches in the weeks leading up to Christmas, playing at various points to mark the hours and wake the citizens.

"The original York waits band is known to have been in continuous existence for at least five hundred years, until abolition in 1836. Today’s York Waits have revived the band as it was in its heyday in the 16th century, playing a wide repertoire of period European music as well as their own arrangements of popular dance and ballad tunes."

Like their predecessors, they play upon a ‘noyse of shawms’, ancestors of the oboe-bassoon family, and characteristic instruments of waits before 1600. They also play cornett, saggbut, and curtal, flutes, recorders great and small, crumhorns, bagpipes, hurdy-gurdies, lute and cittern.

The spokesman added: "The Waits have enlivened many national celebrations, including festivities for Richard III at Bosworth Field, for Elizabeth I at Tilbury Fort and for Henry VIII at Hampton Court Palace, where they have been his Royal wind band.

The date for the diary is Friday June 14 at 7.30pm

Tickets: 01905 611427 / www.worcesterlive.co.uk