Walter Bulwer

Walter Bulwer was born in 1888 in the village of Shipdham where he lived all his life, and worked as a self-employed tailor and barber amongst other things. His father had taught his two sons Walter and Chamberlain, to play the violin and read music from a very early age, and music was at the centre of Walter’s life for the next sixty-odd years. Walter played the banjo, viola and mandolin as well as the fiddle, could knock a tune out of an old ten-key melodeon, and had also played clarinet and trombone in the village band. Before the First World War, Walter played with a piano player at servants’ parties in the big houses in the locality. In 1916 he and Daisy married, and for the next forty years they played for weddings, Walter on fiddle and Daisy on piano or banjo.

Read the rest of this article by Reg Hall on the East Anglian Traditional Music Trust web site [[1]]