John Scarpe’s dulcimer
In the Scarpe family, it was believed that the instrument was made on a barge at Pin Mill on the River Orwell. It was said that, as a boy, John Scarpe had spent a lot of time with an uncle by the name of Joe Death, a gamekeeper who lived at The Clamp, on the shore at Pin Mill and this fact seems to be linked with the dulcimer somehow in family memory.
A discussion with museum conservator and dulcimer player George Monger elicited the information that there were two dulcimers ‘made by his father’. This can’t have been the donor’s father (William John) and unlikely to have been his father (Bertram, brother of the John Scarpe b.1882, who played it), so maybe he meant the father of John Scarpe (b.1882), who was Abraham Scarpe (b.1845). George renovated one and returned it to the family in exchange for the donation to the Museum of East Anglian Life (now the Food Museum) of the other one. As far as we know, the dulcimer is not on display at the museum but is in storage, and the second one is said to have been passed to a cousin who was intending to make a copy (information from correspondence with John D. Scarpe, 2015).
The instrument certainly looks to be home-made, with 22 bridges, 4 strings on the trebles and 3 strings on the bass courses. It has two basic soundholes and a carrying handle attached, implying that it did not have a separate case (although the museum’s acquisition record mentions a wooden cover). It measures 40 inches across the lower edge.
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