This musical community

has been one of our prime areas of research over the past ten years. The story of this large community of blind players has attracted much attention in the wider musical world and papers have been given at a number of prestigious conferences.

The blind musicians of Sheffield were active in a period stretching from around 1780 to 1850. During that time they gained respect in the town for their high standards and their resilient humour in the face of what must have been, great hardship. They raised families and some even started businesses as a result of their ability on their instruments.

Some of their repertoire still exists in the notebook of Joshua Burnett from Worsbrough, and much has been revived by the South Riding Folk Network’s session which is held weekly at the Upperthorpe Hotel on Wednesday evenings.

What seems clear is that the blind musicians, often erroneously referred to as ‘fiddlers’, were very much part of the life of the town during the Regency and early Victorian period. They seem to all have been local men and operated as a closed organisation whose working practices, like much of everyday life in Sheffield, was modelled on the operational system of the Cutler’s Company. The latter was a medieval trades guild which had a controlling influence on much of life in the area known as Hallamshire. This was a geographical area which not only included the town itself but also encompassed Worksop and even as far south as Castleton in the Peak District. The Cutler’s Company’s influence was only broken in the early 19th century when new laws restricting their monopoly were passed in 1819. The mark the company had left can still be felt to this day.  

Similarly, the Blind Fiddlers’ story is told in a series of events, tunes and personalities which, although almost 200 years old, still reverberate in what has been described as ‘The Folk Music Capital of England’.

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