The Song Detectorists (series 2)
The Song Detectorists series 2 follows the work of the Music, Heritage, Project team as we work with local historians, archivists and musicians to excavate the musical treasures in England’s county record offices. The episodes in series 2 visit Shropshire, Lincolnshire, Wiltshire, Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire and Norfolk. Music from each archive is re-imagined in performances including by Nancy Kerr and the Melrose Quartet.
The Song Detectorists series 2 is presented by Matthew Bannister and produced by Natalie Steed of Rhubarb Rhubarb. It was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 20 to 24 October 2025.
Follow the links below to hear the episodes on BBC Sounds and to watch the full tracks by the Melrose Quartet.
Episode 6: Shropshire
Matthew Bannister is in Shropshire tracking down music discovered in county record offices by the Music, Heritage, Place team. In Bishop’s Castle, Matthew is tracking down Thomas Owens, a thatcher, who also composed and compiled West Gallery music for local church bands and choirs in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Nancy Kerr and the Melrose Quartet lead a crowd of hundreds in singing one of Owens’s psalm settings at the Shrewsbury Folk Festival, as they rewild his music back into the county where it was composed. Matthew joins Stephen Rose from Royal Holloway to visit the Shropshire Archives in Shrewsbury and examine Thomas Owens’s remarkable music manuscript, The Shropshire Harmony.
Bonus: we also discussed and performed music collected by Shropshire schoolmaster, artist and antiquarian David Parkes in the late 18th century. This didn’t make it onto the radio show, but you can hear the Melrose Quartet performing ‘A game of all fours’ on the embedded video here ➡️
Episode 7: Lincolnshire
Matthew Bannister is in the Lincolnshire village of Holton Le Moor to hear about the music books of the Dixons, a farming family on the rise in the 18th and 19th centuries. The contents of their books have been catalogued by students at Royal Holloway. He meets Carol Dawson, a local musician, at a crossroads to hear her play a tune on the fiddle. The Dixon books include a tune, Yarborough’s March, which is only found in this book. The books also contain songs that later went on to be sung by folk singers like Joseph Taylor whose versions were collected and recorded by Percy Grainger. Professor Kirsten Gibson, of Newcastle University and the Music Heritage Place project, explains that there is lots of evidence of rural farming families being musically literate and musically engaged at this time.
Episode 8: Wiltshire
Matthew Bannister is in the Wiltshire village of Christian Malford, with local historian Lucy Whitfield, in search of Harriet Willes, a woman with a taste for patriotic songs of the sea. She later married a naval captain, one of Nelson’s “Band of Brothers”, Sir Davidge Gould. Professor Kirsten Gibson, from Newcastle University and the Music, Heritage, Place project talks to Matthew about the songs of Charles Dibden, which were also collected by Jane Austen.
Episode 9: Northamptonshire
Matthew Bannister is with Stephen Rose from Royal Holloway, University of London, as they explore the rich musical heritage of Northamptonshire, including an early 18th-century music book from the Maunsell family of Thorpe Malsor. The manuscript contains a mix of country dance tunes, theatre tunes and military marches, with detailed information about embellishments for the performance of the tunes. Sarah Bridges, Archives and Heritage Services Manager at Northamptonshire Archives, puts the music book in the context of other archival documents showing the possessions and properties of these Northamptonshire families. Among the gems are songs and tunes on tiny scraps of paper sent between Northamptonshire and London and correspondence concerning a much desired instrument: the tromba marina (also known as the trumpet marine).
Episode 10: Bedfordshire and Norfolk
In the Bedfordshire Archives, Stephen Rose shows Matthew Bannister the legal books of Mark Newman, a 17th-century notary. Amongst the densely written material there is a song about the joys of tobacco smoking and a highly political ballad, Lay By Your Reason. Nancy Kerr tells Matthew that it is a sister song to Dominion of The Sword, a ballad from earlier in the 17th century best known now because of its interpretation by the folk singer Martin Carthy.
Matthew also hears from Stephen Rose about an amazing discovery made by the researchers on the project. In Norfolk Record Office, Caro Lesemann-Elliott discovered music written by Henry Purcell in a music book repurposed as an index to the records of Thetford town council. It's the first discovery of music in Purcell's hand for more than 30 years. One of the pieces is an early version of Purcell’s G minor Almand that otherwise is known from the version printed by his widow in 1696 (a year after Purcell died). The Thetford version probably dates from around 1690 or even slightly earlier. It has many differences from the printed version, including different notes, different approaches to sustaining notes for resonance, and much extra ornamentation. The piece has been specially recorded for this programme by Stephen Rose on harpsichord.