Martin Middleton Hyde & Crewe

[francesca]

Hello, I have a five octave upright piano, in which the keyboard folds up into the piano. When my mother purchased it over twenty five years ago she was told it was a ship's piano, very rare. Indeed, when I told my piano teacher that it only had five octaves, he refused to believe that it was a piano!! On the front it says Martin Middleton Hyde & Crewe. Does anyone have any more information about it. There is very little on the internet. I've been offered a full sized, better piano for free so I'm unsure what to do about my old one. It's not the greatest sounding and some notes stick but with its rarity value...??

[Bill Kibby]

A ship can have any kind of piano it wants, yours is a 5-octave yacht piano. They are unusual, but certainly not rare, there are many postings on this forum for them. There were several firms named Middleton, but this particular one seems to have appeared in the early years of the twentieth century, and was still in Hyde by 1938. He doesn't seem to have made pianos, but was a dealer.