Thornbury acoustic guitar

I found this whilst looking for information online about my guitar. I lived in Ash Vale from 1982-1999 and in 1990 had just started playing guitar at the age of 32!.....I needed strings and Nigel's house was only 5 mins from me so I went round and was directed by his partner to the rear of the house where his workshop was....I am an engineer / toolmaker / fabricator and instantly was struck by his workmanship and set up even though I had never be in a luthiers workshop before. I did ask about his guitars but they seemed out of reach (my first guitar was an EKO ranger back then!).....But a couple of months later in Guitar villiage in Farnham I saw a beatiful sunburst OOOO / M36 size (although I did not know this at the time!) Thornbory on the wall and bought it as one strum told me even then I needed something better than the EKO.

It is a Thornverton 115 serial number 94 and like the stories in this thread it gets comments wherever I go....In the last couple of years only I have started venturing out of the house and have played at Robin Hood's bay festival (twice) and the Wooton Blues Festival as well as local sing arounds, and believe me it holds it's own against anything out there, at Robin Hoods bay a guy with a Martin Marquis OM came over to see what was drowning him out and told me he was amazed he had never heard of the maker as he should be much better known.

In my travels just in the last two years I have met three owners, one with the exact same guitar (Ned Clamp) and another guy with an acoustic bass which is basically a giant version of mine, with the destinctive headstock and saddle shape, but online research has helped me find several other players. Ned clamp was a mine of information as he ordered his as a special build so could tell me lots I did not know. I wanted to contact as many owners as possible to do a small website database / owners / images resource and wrote Nigel a letter at what I hoped was his address, as did not want to proceed without his blessing, but never got a reply so have not taken it any further, but users / owners I have found so far include (please add any I have missed);

Gordon Giltrap, Ian A. Anderson, Rosie Hardman, Peter Bond, Hector Gilchrest, Bob Walton, George Norris, Ali Farka Toure, Chris Stern, Robb Johnson, Ned Clamp, Mike Martin, Richard Chaff, Maggie Holland

I hope this is of interest to some of you out there,

best regards all,

Edward