Billy Bennington said he had seen about three dulcimers made by someone called Marshall. He described them as big instruments with brass corners and the strings as being all wound wire on the bottom end. He called them ‘cabinet-made’ instruments, implying they were of good quality.
There was a whole family of Marshalls who worked as wood carvers or cabinet makers in Norwich for at least part of their lives. Joseph Edward Marshall (1833-1911) had been born and brought up in the same area as Mark Widdows, another superb dulcimer maker. Out of his four sons, the most likely candidates are Arthur (1862-1929), a cabinet-maker or William (1875-1955), a wood carver, although Walter (1877-1950) also worked as a wood carver until about 1911, before going into the pub trade and then becoming a general shopkeeper.
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