Dorchester Dulcimer Weekend - Good Company and a Good Deal of It

Tony Gillam
on mountain dulcimer
Photo courtesy of
Ross Gooding

I’ve just returned from a long weekend in Dorset where I took part in the first Dorchester Dulcimer Weekend. What’s Dorchester like? Well, Daniel Defoe, in A tour thro' the whole island of Great Britain (1724–26), described the place thus: “The town is populous, tho' not large, the streets broad, but the buildings old, and low; however, there is good company and a good deal of it; and a man that coveted a retreat in this world might as agreeably spend his time, and as well in Dorchester, as in any town I know in England...” This still seems an apt description, based on my recent visit.

Since Defoe passed through, Dorchester has also become famed as the place where the Tolpuddle Martyrs – early advocates for workers’ rights - were arrested and tried in 1834. The town is also, of course, synonymous with the great novelist and poet Thomas Hardy, who based his fictional town of Casterbridge on Dorchester.

Damian Clarke on hammered dulcimer
Photo courtesy of Ross Gooding 

Sadly I didn’t get to meet The Mayor of Casterbridge nor, regrettably, did I have time to visit Hardy’s house, but I did find the streets broad, as Defoe had found – broad enough, in fact, to busk in, alongside the organiser of the Dulcimer Weekend, the irrepressible Damian Clarke.  Damian (artist, writer and consummate player of both the hurdy-gurdy and the hammered dulcimer) kindly invited me to join him busking in South Street on Saturday morning. I hadn’t been busking since about 1986 – and never before with the mountain dulcimer - so I was a bit apprehensive, but the public seemed to like it and I soon remembered how enjoyable it is to busk. In the afternoon we regrouped to the comfortable surroundings of the Shire Hall’s Café. It transpires this is in the very building (now the Shire Hall Museum) where the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ trial took place; (I’m told beneath it are the cells where prisoners were held while awaiting trial.) Nowadays, it’s a beautiful airy building with a welcoming mezzanine café which proved an ideal venue for our series of workshops and concerts featuring the two distinct types of instrument known as a dulcimer.

Magdalena Atkinson
on hammered dulcimer and guitar
Photo courtesy of Ross Gooding

Damian had invited me - and multi-instrumentalist Graham Hood - as ambassadors of the mountain dulcimer while Damian himself represented the hammered dulcimer, along with fellow composer/performers Dizzi Dulcimer and Magdalena Atkinson. Between all of us, we provided workshops for both instruments plus concerts on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon. And, just when we thought the music was over, we were invited along to join the regular Sunday evening folk music session at local micropub, The Convivial Rabbit. The unusually-named pub has nothing to do with the long-eared mammal but is a place where one can have a “convivial rabbit” (i.e. a friendly chat.) Sunday also happened to be St Patrick’s Night so Damian, Graham and our mountain dulcimer friend Paul Crocker (who had joined and supported us throughout the weekend,) endeavoured to summon up some suitably Irish tunes. For my part, I became acutely aware of a huge shamrock-shaped gap in my own dulcimer repertoire. It didn’t matter. Just as in Defoe’s day, at The Convivial Rabbit there was “good company and a good deal of it.”

Many thanks to everyone who made me feel so welcome in Dorset. Let’s do it again next year!

All photos (c) Ross Gooding (Diffraction Image Ltd.)