Billy Colk
Some years ago we heard from Linda Preece, who had written about Joseph Lloyd Royal, a woodcarver born in 1913 in Little Plumstead, a few miles east of Norwich. Joe had mentioned a relative called Billy Colk who ‘had returned from the war severely injured [and] was left blind with badly impaired hearing … yet amazingly was still able to travel to different venues where he played the dulcimer, carried from place to place strapped to his back.’ Apparently he could still ‘hear’ the vibrations of the dulcimer. He is said to have lived in St Dunstan’s Home for the Blind. St Dunstan’s functioned mainly as a training centre and was established in the First World War when many soldiers were were blinded by mustard gas.
Despite extensive research, we cannot positively identify which of several William Colks this might be. It seems likely that Billy Colk lived in Norwich, and would most likely have been born in the 1890s, but that is as much as we can state at the moment.
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