Stephen Baldwin

Village fiddler; Forest of Dean

Born
1873, Hereford, Herefordshire
Died
24 November 1955, Upton Bishop, Herefordshire

Stephen Baldwin was a fiddler raised in Newent, Gloucestershire. His father had played for the morris at Clifford’s Mesne. He worked all his life as a platelayer on the Great Western Railway and served with the Gloucestershire Regiment at the Somme. Peter Kennedy recorded him for the BBC in the 1950s, and so did Russell Wortley. Together they left the largest body of playing by any traditional English village fiddler.

Further reading: Musical Traditions