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New lease of life for our grand piano

The well-loved 150 year-old John Broadwood piano at The Lyric has had a new lease of life. Over the last year Bridport based musician Sammy Hurden has been playing and singing on the old dusty piano at The Lyric. For years it has been left to its own devices… occasionally dragged out for a concert, but as she played it, she started to love the sound. And the more she played it the more it responded and came to life. Steve Jones had also been caring and tuning the piano, and he reckoned it was made anywhere between 1870 and 1890.

But over the years it became dusty. So, Sammy made some special furniture polish out of beeswax, oil and lavender, and started to clean and polish this wonderful old piano. The wood beneath the dust started to gleam, and the old ivory keys started to shine when they were cleaned with lemon and milk. But there was a caster missing at the back. Recently Stephen Cooper came down from Bath armed with a selection of Broadwood piano legs, each sporting a caster with a wheel, but all slightly different sizes. There isn’t much he doesn’t know about pianos having been a tuner for many years, and he had picked up a job lot of Broadwood Legs and Casters which had been in the attic for ages! He carefully removed the leg and there was one caster that almost fit, but he needed to shave the end of the leg to make it work – and in the end it did. Huge thanks to Stephen for his care, expertise and time!

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