Marshall Sadd (1869-1951)
Marshall Frederick Sadd was another name passed on to us by Billy Bennington as a dulcimer player, although the two may never have met and Billy may only have known of him by reputation through Marshall’s older brother Herbert Sadd. Nothing is known about Marshall’s music-making, and whether or not he played after he moved out of East Anglia in later life.
Marshall was born in 1869 in Marlingford, west of Norwich, where he was apprenticed as a blacksmith by the age of twelve, probably to Frederick Blyth, the Marlingford blacksmith who lived with the Sadd family for many years.
In 1890 he married Mary Ann Bennett, the daughter of another blacksmith from nearby Hethersett, where they were living in the 1891 census and where their first four children were born. After Marshall had left Marlingford, Frederick Blythe was advertising for a live-in “improver to shoeing and general smith” – this also suggesting that Marshall had been working with him up to that point.
In 1900/01 Marshall and his family moved to Lakenheath in west Suffolk where they stayed for about ten years, and in 1911 they were living on Hardwick Road in Bury St Edmunds, and Marshall was working as a blacksmith on the Hardwick estate, which was owned by the Cullum family. The estate contained an entire village, and the main house also had extensive grounds which at one time included a Venetian indoor riding school, and the local Hunt often met there, so Marshall’s shoeing skills would have been in constant demand. When the owner died in 1921, the estate (as with so many others following the 1914-18 war) was broken up, but by this time Marshall had moved out of East Anglia to Astley, near Nuneaton in Warwickshire, where he was living by the time of the 1921 census.
The work of a blacksmith changed dramatically in this period, firstly with so many horses being taken to the First World War, and secondly with the increase in motor transport and mechanisation on farms. Blacksmithing wasn’t only about shoeing horses of course, there were many opportunities to repair and make agricultural implements and domestic items such as fire-grates, even perhaps tuning pegs for dulcimers! Astley was a tiny village and he probably got a good amount of work from the Castle estate there, although in the 1921 census he was working for himself, not employed by the estate.
From photographs taken in the Astley years – probably in the 1940s, when Marshall was in his seventies – it is clear that he kept a small number of pigs and cows, and a horse-drawn cart bearing his name is also visible in the background.
Marshall died on 3rd April 1951 and probate records show his address in Astley to have been Blacksmith’s Cottage, which is still the name of the house today, just down the lane from newly restored Astley Castle.
There are no recordings of Marshall Sadd and no details about his dulcimer are known.
We do however know more about his brother Herbert Sadd‘s music and instrument.
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