Charlie Bridger

Charlie Bridger: singer and musician, Stone-in-Oxney, Kent, 1913-1988.

Born 9th July 1913, at Kenardington, into a musical family. His father, also Charles, was employed as mower on a farm at Kenardington, and played tenor horn in both Kenardington and Woodchurch Bands. Charlie's great-grandfather had played the flute, while his grandfather Tom played clarinet. There is a photograph of Woodchurch Band from around 1920, which shows Charlie's father and grandfather, and Charlie in the front row, holding a clarinet. Band practices often ended with a sing-song, and although Charlie was too young to go into the pub, he picked up a number of songs this way.

Between the wars Charlie played clarinet in bands for dances in local village halls. After the Second World War he took up playing the tenor horn with the Rye Town Band. When that band folded, he joined the Peasmarsh Band, and later the Cranbrrok Town band; he was an active bandsman practically for the rest of his life.

When Charlie left school he worked on the same farm as his father, but found that he could earn more by stone-breaking and road-building. It was while working as a stone-breaker that he first met Lilian Gill (Lily), whom he married in October 1938. During the Second World War he worked on a market garden, as well as serving in the Home Guard. After the war he worked in a variety of agricultural jobs, ending his working life as an employee of the Southern Water Authority, maintaining the banks of the Royal Military Canal.

'I went to visit Charlie at his home in Kent because I had been told about his superb version of the song Three Maidens a-Milking Did Go (available on the veteran CD Down in the Fields VTC4CD; two other songs, The Folkestone Murder and The Zulu Wars, will be reissued on future Veteran CDs).  Charlie had worked for most of his life at a near-by stone quarry and I am sorry that I only managed to see him on one occasion.'

Part of the booklet notes, written by Mike Yates, to the Musical Traditions Records CDs The Birds Upon the Tree (MTCD333)

Bibliography

George Frampton, Charlie Bridger musician and singer, Bygone Kent, 1993 (?)