Lucy Broadwood

Lucy Etheldred Broadwood, 1858-1929

Lucy Broadwood was born at Melrose in Scotland. Her father Henry was a partner in the well-known Broadwood piano manufacturing company, senior partner from 1861 until his death. In 1864 the family moved to Lyne House, the Broadwood family home near Rusper,on the Surrey-Sussex border.

A talented singer and pianist, Lucy’s interest in folk song was prompted by her uncle, the Reverend John Broadwood, who had assembled a collection of sixteen songs, privately published in 1847, with the title Old English Songs, As Now Sung by the Peasantry of the Weald of Surrey and Sussex, and Collected by One Who Has Learnt Them by Hearing Them Sung Every Christmas from Early Childhood, by the Country People, Who Go About to the Neighbouring Houses, Singing, or “Wassailing” as It is Called, at that Season. This was republished by Lucy as Sussex Songs in 1889, in an expanded edition which included a number of songs which Lucy herself had collected by in the 1880s, and at least one collected by her father.

Having established links with other folk song enthusiasts, notably Sabine Baring-Gould in the West Country, in 1893 – a full decade before Cecil Sharp or Vaughan Williams began their collecting activities – she was able to publish English County Songs. This was edited with John Alexander Fuller Maitland (1856–1936), a music critic and writer who was also a relative of Lucy Broadwood, and a close friend throughout her life. This book attempted to present at least one song associated with each county. Kent is represented by just one song, ‘John Appleby’. In common with a number of other songs in the book, this was not collected directly by Broadwood, but had been sent to her by a correspondent – in this case, by Samuel Willett, “the singing baker of Cuckfield”, in Sussex. Willett had heard it sung by “Kentish hop-pickers”.

In 1898 Broadwood was one of the 110 founding members of the Folksong Society. She became honorary secretary in 1904 and played an important role in establishing the new body, making frequent contributions to its Journal. Her collecting activities took place primarily in Sussex; she does not appear to have collected any songs in Kent. However she was sent four songs with Kentish connections by Mrs Lucy Grahame of St Leonards in Sussex, while Ella Bull of Cottenham in Cambridgeshire sent her a version of ‘Spencer the Rover’, collected “from a Kentish man and woman”.