Jan Stewer CD's

During the 1930's A. J. Coles wrote a number of short stories in the Devon Dialect, and these were collated as a series of books, using phonetic spelling to indicate the appropriate pronunciation. The books were written in the first person, with the character Jan Stewer as the narrator, recounting life and stories from the fictional parish of Muddlecombe, Devon.

John Sage has been given permisson by the Copyright holder to record these stories and sell the recordings to raise money for the maintenance of Luppitt Church. The stories (read in the Devon Dialect by Mr John Sage) were originally made available as cassette tapes, and sold locally in the Parish to raise money. The tapes were later converted to CD in 2004.

The CDs have now been de-hissed, digitally re-mastered, and duplicated by a professional recording company and re-released in January 2008. The CDs have a screen printed surface and are packaged in a slimline Jewelcase containing a card insert with track listing on the inside and a printed cover.

The CDs are available for purchase at £4 each, plus post and packing.

You can listen to extracts from the CDs by clicking on the green play buttons below. You can then jump to different points in the playback by clicking at different points in the grey playback bar.

Note that the audio has been compressed from 44KHz (CD quality) to 8KHz (telephone quality) to reduce size, so the quality is not the same as on the CDs.

CD 3 - A Parcel of ol' Crams: Introduction (3min)

CD 9 - A Parcel of ol' Crams: Breathing room only (full story; 9min)

There are now only the 6 of the original 10 CDs available, containing a variety of stories taken from the following books: In Chimley Corner, A Parcel of ol' Crams, Ole Biskit, Yap, and On the Moor of a Night. The stories contained on each CD are listed below, with the story length in brackets. CDs 7 to 10 are now sold out.

If you would like to order any of these CDs, please click on the 'ordering books or CDs' menu item.

BBC local Radio and Television became interested in the CDs, and Mr Sage's recordings, shortly after the CDs were released. BBC News interviewed Mr Sage for the South West's 'Spotlight' evening news programme, and BBC Radio Devon spent a morning focused on local Devon dialects, featuring an interview with Mr Sage. You can see and hear extracts from the TV interview and the BBC Radio interviews using the links below.

BBC Television - Spotlight feature