English Dialect Sound Recordings (Northern England)
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.