Simon Chadwick

Simon Chadwick was born and grew up on the edge of the New Forest in the south of England. He lived in Oxford for 8 years, and then in St Andrews in Scotland for 12 years, before moving to Armagh in 2018.
Simon was taught change-ringing on tower bells by his mother when he was just a boy; he went away to University and studied physics for one year before switching to archaeology. Now he applies this background and training to the study of the harp traditions of Ireland and Scotland.
As well as learning to play the old Irish harp, based on the earlier work of Ann Heymann, Simon started gathering information about the surviving historical harps preserved in museums, and this led to him commissioning replicas or copies of them. He did a lot of work researching and experimenting with historical stringing and setup, using brass wire strings. He also started collating and studying the sources for old Irish and Scottish harp music, aiming to restore the old music to the reconstructed instruments.