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Walter George Clabburn (1862-1942)  

It is known through family history that Walter G. Clabburn (b 1886) played a dulcimer made by his father, but the instrument has not survived – or at least its whereabouts are not known.

His father, also Walter George Clabburn (1862-1942), who made the dulcimer, was born at a period where industries in Norwich were undergoing big changes and new opportunities were opening up to replace the ailing textile industry. The area he was born and brought up in was the same area where Mark Widdows, dulcimer maker extraordinaire had lived and worked. Walter senior’s father William was a sawyer and he may well have handed down skills to Walter, or maybe just instilled him with an interest in carpentry which led him to make his own dulcimer.

Walter George Clabburn junior left Norwich to work in London, gaining a good job as post office engineer, and spending the rest of his life in the capital city, where he died in 1947.
 

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