Walter Henry Mayson (born 8 November 1835) was an English

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

maker.

Biography

Walter Henry Mayson was born in Cheetwood, then a small town about a mile and a half north of

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

. He was the fourth child out of eleven with five brothers and four sisters. After a few years the Mayson family moved to

Cheetham Hill Cheetham is an inner-city area and electoral ward of Manchester, England, which in 2011 had a population of 22,562. It lies on the west bank of the River Irk, north of Manchester city centre, close to the boundary with Salford, bounded by Brou ...

, another two miles away from Manchester. Mrs. Mayson opened a school there with two of her sisters. Mayson was sent to the school and was taught by Thomas Whalley. At seventeen, Mayson was apprenticed at J. & A. Phillips & Co., a firm of merchants. His sister, Mary Ann, was married to a composer and organist, Joseph Thorne Harris of

Manchester Cathedral Manchester Cathedral, formally the Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St Mary, St Denys and St George, in Manchester, England, is the mother church Mother church or matrice is a term depicting the Christian Church as a mother ...

, Manchester. Mayson spent all of his leisure time at his sister's house, where his love for music was encouraged. Told that his dead grandfather's fiddle was for sale, he struck a bargain with the owner, and started taking lessons. Mayson had by this time married Elizabeth Green, daughter of William Green the landscape painter. On 18 November 1904 Mayson had a paralytic seizure. On 26 December he had another stroke and did not regain consciousness before his death on 31 December.

Fiddle making

At age 39, Mayson started to make fiddles. He took a room in

Barton Arcade Barton Arcade is a Victorian shopping arcade in Manchester, England, located between Deansgate and St Ann's Square. The arcade was listed as a Grade II* listed building on the 25 January 1972. The listing includes the "block of shops (Barton ...

Deansgate Deansgate is a main road (part of the A56) through Manchester City Centre, England. It runs roughly north–south in a near straight route through the western part of the city centre and is the longest road in the city centre at over one mile ...

, Manchester where he produced 10 fiddles. His first customer, James Fildes, paid £10. During this period Mayson also wrote, and some of his songs and essays were published in Manchester newspapers. In 1899, he wrote a book called ''Violin Making''.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Mayson, Walter Henry 1835 births 1904 deaths British luthiers People from Cheetham Hill Businesspeople from Manchester 19th-century English businesspeople