CHAPTER 4: Dulcimers in the British Isles since 1800 > Dulcimers in East Anglia

People - 13 of 13

Among younger players:

Colin Hall, Tuddenham, Suffolk, who gave up playing the dulcimer to work as a fisherman, but then started again.

He plays on Friday nights in Ipswich with the East Suffolk Country Band, does not like playing solo and was unwilling to be recorded because he felt it would make it all too important.

He has an enormous old dulcimer some 43" long which came from a coal-shed in Clopton.

Tony Singleton, a schoolteacher, Newton Flotman, who first led me to Billy Bennington, and learnt from him himself, and has sufficient interest to search out references to dulcimer tutors in the British Library.

Stephen Shipley, the postman from Beccles, who took his instrument to Billy Bennington for tuning and maintenance and who is learning from Molly Whitaker.

Bridget Westrop, Billy Cooper's granddaughter, who "had a go at the dulcimer" when Billy was still alive, and she was 6 or 7; she says she was too young to appreciate it, but is now playing her grandfather's favourite dulcimer.

Bernard Duffield, Yarmouth, and Ken Saul, Caister, whom I have yet to visit, and other players who are rumoured to be in Norwich, Walsingham and elsewhere.

Brian Rodger, a Norwich nurse, who plays a Norfolk dulcimer with Norfolk hammers, but whose style owes as much to his Scots father as it does to his local environment.