Dear Geoff & Louise,

Earlier this year we visited one of your Car Boot sales and found someone selling boxes of old music books and as both my husband and myself are music teachers this would be a useful find for us and our students, there were several boxes and we bought the lot for £50.00 which we considered a BARGAIN!
On closer examination of the contents we found two fascinating sets of magazines. One was the ‘Consent’ from the early 1920s to the 1980s and the other was the buletin of the Hazlemere Foundation for the same period. Since the recorder is an instrument we teach we knew these would be of interest to the Dolmetsch Foundation. Arnold Dolmetsch rediscovered the recorder and made the first recorders of the type we use today.

We rang the Foundation in Surrey to tell them what we had found and within days the grand-daughters of Arnold Dolmetsch (both aged 70) arrived on our doorstep! They were thrilled with what we had as they were in much better condition than their own copies.
We had by then put 3 boxes of hand-written scores by two composers Lennox Berkeley and Anthony Bernard into an auction but after meeting the two sister withdrew them and while passing through Surrey delivered them to their home in Hezlemere. We gave them to the Foundation (which is a registered charity) but what we received in return was priceless.

We were invited to stay in their home and were priveledged to handle and examine early music books and instruments. One book of Lute music belonged to GALILEO’S father and another was a sixteenth century manuscript of recorder music by among other ‘Mr PURCELL’!
We were entertained by Marguerite Dolmetsch play BACH on her bass violin made in 1647 (the year Samuel Pepys married)

The crowning glory of the weekend was that Lynn was invited to play with the Dolmetsch Consort, the best recorder group ever (they played on a Beatles album after Paul McCartney met them by chance at the Abbey Road studios!
Lynn played a tenor recorder made by Arnold Dolmetsch as the proto-type for all recorders played today.

The experience was beyond price for us as musicians and it all arose from a visit to one of Geoff & Louise Car Boot Sales.

Thank you a MILLION times over,

Lynn & Norman