Obscure but quite long-lived. Belding & Bennett was initially based in Wallington, Surrey, but it later moved to Purley in the same county. It seems to have started off in the mid 1940s as a shop selling electrical goods - televisions, radios, vacuum cleaners and the like - but by the early 1950s it was offering recording and tape-to-disc services. Winston Churchill had one of its records in his collection: a recording of a speech that he gave at Biggin Hill on the 18th of June 1951. In addition, Michael Thomas's site for 78 rpm discs has a picture of a undated record of Violet Barnett playing 'Minuet Op.14, No.1' by Paderewski. Presumably there are quite a few other records on the Belding & Bennett label out there, but searching online has only brought up one other. Thankfully for the purposes of this site it was a 7" EP from 1972. It was by Rosebery Voices, and it offered the songs 'The Lord Is My Shepherd', 'Jesus Christ The Apple Tree', 'Changes', 'Autumn', 'Wanderer's Lament', 'Encounter' and 'The Drowning Of The Duke'. The pressing marks on the label suggest that manufacture was by Orlake; the scan appears by kind permission of Sid-departure of the 45Cat site. The 'Bennett' was N. 'Stan' Bennett, who was also responsible for Morse code practice records on the G3HSC label (q.v.). Belding & Bennett were still advertising in periodicals such as 'Autosport' and 'The Short Wave Magazine' into the early '70s, but instead of offering to make records they were selling radar detection devices which could be fitted to cars to give advance warning of speed cameras. If anyone knows of other Belding & Bennett records - particularly vinyl ones - I'd be interested to hear about them.
Copyright 2023 Robert Lyons.