W. Bro Stan Marut PPrJGD SLGR, Media Team News Editor, examines the Middlesex Accent.
I have always tried to establish a continuing link between our historical experience of Middlesex as an entity and give it a pre-eminence over its current manifestation where its historic “hundreds” are now governed by the usurper London in the form of the Greater London Authority. You might think this a strong sentiment, especially coming from someone who has the Freedom of the City of London and is a member of a City Livery. However, this essentially is a City of London connotation and Middlesex existed without the City Walls. So, when we talk about a London accent what do we mean? If London as such is the square mile, then it is necessarily follows that the accent which we consider a “London accent” must be the Middlesex accent.
As language changes and new communities spring up from those who have arrived at our shores, then the notion of a Middlesex accent may be lost. However, there have been enterprising people who probably unwittingly have preserved for posterity the notion of the Middlesex accent by way of these recordings (see links below). The Geordie, Scouse and Brummie accents are easily recognisable. Middlesex probably less so as it merges with the mix of accents in the new Metropolis.
The following is a recording of a Mr Kent, shoemaker, and engineer, who was born in 1888, a year before the formation the Middlesex County Council which was to last until 1965. Mr Kent recalls various forms of horse-drawn public transport. Cambridge Heath, Bloomsbury, Dalston and Pentonville are all nearby areas of East London which were originally part of Middlesex. Recorded in 1967. These areas mentioned were lost to a London County Council formed in 1889.
https://soundcloud.com/harringay-online/middlesex-accent-hackney-kent
The next recording is of a Mr John Andrews and he talks about horses, identifies a number of parts on a harness and describes the relationship between horse and carter. Recorded in 1952. John was born in 1868 and was a farm bailiff. Middlesex at that time would have been a rural environment apart from those areas in close proximity to the City Of London. Indeed, the County of Middlesex as an administrative unit was yet to come in 1889.
https://soundcloud.com/harringay-online/middlesex-accent-john-andrews
The following is a comment left on the web site forum which is interesting:
“Listening to a collection of accents around the south of England, it’s notable how much most of the accents share. All have in common that ‘ooo-arr’ burr we’ve come to associate with places like Norfolk and Somerset. Even counties now partly consumed by London like Surrey, Kent and Essex had strong ‘country’ accents in living memory. You couldn’t get much closer to London than Middlesex. So, I was interested to hear a recording of a Middlesex accent from a retired farm bailiff, born in 1868. There’s also a recording of a shoemaker from “Hackney, Middlesex” born in 1888. You can hear the crossover between the rural Southern England accent and what we now think of as Cockney. (Ah, so that’s where Cockney came from….is it?). Somewhere between these two accents, I imagine is how the folk round here sounded at around the time Harringay was built up”. Harringay was a town in Middlesex until 1889.
I hope that readers will click on the links which will provide a connection to a heritage worth preserving.
