[78-L] Little Dolcoppice Records

[Roy Gould]

New, here, but a record collector..

Back in 1951 my parents got married and had their honeymoon on the Isle of Wight. they went to Gurnard Pines holiday camp and spent 2 weeks there, and went back for many years after.

While they were there, a recording company called Little Dolcoppice if Whitwell IoW came round and invited holidaymakers to make their own records. Mum and Dad decided to make 3 records. 

Here’s the interesting bit. the records are an aluminium disc, 2 of them about 6” diameter, the other 8” diameter. Recorded on what appears to be shellac and at 78rpm. Unfortunately over the years the records had been played on wind-up gramophones with a tracking weight of about 3 tons so they got rather worn and scratched. the 8” record suffered so much that the shellac has fallen off now, I’m left with the bare disc. Luckily I put them onto a good quality reel-to-reel tape and cassette tape, so have reasonable copies of them. The 2 6” records I’ve managed to play on a goldring lenco deck and onto computer, using one of the digital cleaning services to clean up the recordings.

Mum’s 6” record had Chatanooga Shoe-Shine Boy on one side and down in the Glen on the other side. Accompaniment was someone playing the piano.

Dad’s 6” record had Lucky Old Sun on one side and You’re Breaking My Heart on the other. the 8” record had Your Foolish Heart on one side, I forget what was on the other side! I still have the labels off that record even though it’s unplayable.

Has anyone heard of this recording company or the process they would have used for recording?

I’ve got a few really old 78s dating from the WW1 period, acquired from my grandmother in the 1960s along with some more “modern” stuff including Hello Mary Lou by Rick Nelson on an Indian London American pressing.

Thanks in advance.


Roy Gould
Aldington Kent.