THE village of Bere Ferrers located on the west bank of the River Tamar has obviously struck a chord with harp maker Tim Hampson.

Tim, who specialises in producing replicas of these beautiful and historic, multi-stringed instruments, sees the Bere Peninsula as the perfect place to practise his craft.

After spending nine years as the sole technician for leading harp retailers Clive Morley Harps in Gloucestershire Tim, along with and his wife Emma, moved to West Devon 15 years ago to live in the home of Emma's parents - a former rectory at Bere Ferrers.

The couple have three children - William, 14, James, 12 and Benjamin 5, and Tim has three more grown-up children, Emile, Hannah and Joshua, who live in different parts of the country.

He said: 'It did make sense to come down here from Gloucestershire but it was a bit of a risk because previously we had a steady income and we did not know where the money was going to come from but coming here we had no regrets. Bere Ferrers is idyllic and we landed on our feet to come to somewhere which is such a wonderful place to live and work.'

There must be only around 12 to 15 individual, specialist harp makers in the British Isles but the location of his home and workshop has not deterred a string of orders coming in from all over the world.

Tim, 57, currently specialises in two styles of Welsh triple harp, two Briggs style clarsachs, Italian Arpa Doppia and Erard single action pedal harp. The smaller harps (clarsachs) can range from £2,200 in price to £3,800 for a 34 string one; with the larger more ornate harps being priced as much as £15,000 - however, each instrument is lovingly crafted - taking between two and three months each to produce and considerably longer for a pedal harp with mechanism, moulded decoration and gilding.

So far he has handcrafted more than 60 instruments and has customers from the United Kingdom and all over the world including the United States of America, Japan, Austria, Germany, Holland, Belgium, France and Italy.

Tim has built up a reputation in this specialised industry over more than 30 years but his 'labour of love' can be traced back to when his parents took him to two concerts when he was a boy - the gypsy guitarist, Manitas De Plata and another by the famous Trio Los Paraguayos - consisting of2 a guitarist, singer and a harpist.

It led him to playing the guitar and a passion for flamenco while his affection for the harp stemmed from watching the comedy antics of Marx Brothers films and in particular the harp playing Harpo.

But it was a visit to a second hand shop in his home town of Rochester in Kent in the early 1980s that pulled on his heart strings when at the back of the shop he saw an abandoned and dilapidated Grecian pedal harp (circa 1830). Tim bought it for £50, which turned out to be a wise investment on his part.

'It was full of woodworm and decrepit, bits were falling of as I took it to the car, and all the mechanism and strings were in poor condition but when I went to rebuilt it at home I came a bit of a cropper.'

However. he was so determined to restore it that he enrolled on a musical instrument technology course at the London College of Furniture, and soon got his harp into shape!

Tim progressed onto a BTEC course where he added the strings of wood science, musical instrument technology, wood finishing, gilding and tuning of instruments to his bow. One day as a student while visiting the Edinburgh Harp Festival for the first time, he received a call from Morley Harps offering him a post to run their workshops in Gloucestershire.

.... fast forward nine years later and Tim is now his own man, who not only makes instruments for such famous harpists as Edward Witsenburg of Holland and Cheryl Ann Fulton (founder president of the Historical Harp Society in the USA) and has carried out repair work for Elizabeth Jane Baldry - who lives in Chagford - but also repairs, services, regulates and restores harps as well as making a range of music stands and stools.

'My love is for the recreation of historical harps. Keeping very much to the original design, great accuracy is spent to ensure the instruments are both pleasing to the eye and ear. When making commissioned pieces every care is taken to ensure the customers individual requirements are met,' added Tim, .'

No doubt Manitas De Plata, Trio Los Paraguayos and even Harpo Marx himself would have been proud of Tim's contribution to this most harmonic and majestic musical instrument.

l For more information see Tim Hampson's website at http://www.harpmaker.eu">www.harpmaker.eu, email him at [email protected]">[email protected] or call 01822 840820.