English Dialect Sound Recordings (Northern England)
Contains records with digital mediaDetails
Type of record: Archive
Title: English Dialect Sound Recordings (Northern England)
Classmark: LAVC/SRE/D/1
Creator(s): Hornsby, G; Lenihan, J M A; Orton, Harold (1898-1975); Riddell, William
Date(s): [1939]
Size and medium: 63 Audio Files; Digital
Persistent link: https://explore.library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections-explore/414941
Collection group(s): Leeds Archive of Vernacular Culture
Description
The majority of recordings were made for the Survey of Northumbrian Dialects, in 1938 and 1939. This survey was inaugurated at Armstrong College, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (then part of the University of Durham) in November 1928, and continued until the outbreak of war in 1939. The recordings were made in Northumberland, Durham and Tyne and Wear. It is thought that most of these are copies of original field recordings, cut at King's College Phonetics Laboratory, Newcastle, some time in 1939 before Orton took up a new teaching position at the University of Sheffield. Orton used a portable disc-cutting machine to record his informants, and this subseries does contain a number of smaller discs, ms. labelled Master in Orton's hand, which could therefore be original recordings.
In addition, the subseries contains six recordings made by Orton in Todmorden (West Yorkshire), in March/April 1939 [D/1/047-052]. These include a recording of Frank Helliwell describing his playing the part of Tosspot in the Todmorden Pace Egg Play [D/1/047]. Recordings made by Orton in Croft (Lancashire) [D/1/055-057] and the Scottish Borders village of Morebattle [D/1/059] are also contained within this subseries.
Provenance
The discs in this subseries are numbered LAVC/SRE/D/1/001-074 as per original references. [Sequence is incomplete due to some missing discs and unplayable discs].
Original gramophone discs were transferred to the British Library in March 2019 for long term preservation and digitisation.
System of arrangement
The recordings for each collector are arranged in chronological order.
Access and usage
Reproduction
Access
This collection is currently being worked on by the Special Collections team and therefore may not always be readily available for users to consult. Please contact staff in advance if you would like to access the material.
Downloadable text transcriptions (where available) are reproduced with permission from Juhani Klemola and Mark Jones. ©All Rights Reserved.
Physical and technical conditions
78 r.p.m.
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