Daphne’s Family & Childhood Connection to Devizes
Celebrations of Daphne Oram have been building in London since the beginning of December, for those in the sphere of electronic music and music technology. On the first Thursday of the month The Barbican held a concert commemorating Daphne’s centenary, where sound and music fair access partner, Nonclassical, in partnership with The Oram Trust and Oram Awards played commissioned reimagined works from various contemporary electronic artists, inspired from tapes in Daphne’s archive. This has been released as the album, Vari/ations: An Ode To Oram.
London university Goldsmiths acquired Daphne’s archive in 2006, bringing her work into the wider public domain, after decades of relative obscurity. In the male dominated realm of electronic music, this has presented a better understanding of Daphne as a visionary in the early development of the genre, and in turn inspired female musicians and producers.
But our story begins rather differently, in the late nineteen-twenties, at Belle Vue House, Devizes, where a much younger Daphne is caught trying to climb inside the family piano! Daphne’s niece Carolyn Scales explained, “she was asked ‘why are you doing that?’ and Daphne replied, she wanted the piano to make a sound between the notes on the keyboard.”
I’m grateful to Carolyn for providing some fascinating background into Daphne’s family and childhood in Devizes, something overlooked by the insurmountable information available regarding her work.
“All the siblings enjoyed listening to classical music but only Daphne had the ability to create music,” she told me. “Ida’s sisters often joined her to play trios and quartets at Belle Vue House while James did learn to play the cello but was happy to stand aside for more competent players. In his defence James’s father’s diaries only mention one musical instrument at their home, a piano declared by a piano tuner as not worthy of tuning. Maybe we underestimate the strength of our Oram artistic genes.”
Daphne Blake Oram was born on the 31st December 1925, to James Oram (1890-1964) and Ida nee Talbot (1887-1972.) “Ida ,” Carolyn explained, “who at heart seems to have been a natural party goer, was plagued by ill health. Daphne was born in Ivy House Nursing Home not because of a fear of losing Daphne but because of Ida’s problems with her legs. In the first photograph of Daphne she is being held by Ida who is sitting in a wicker bath chair with Arthur and John in front of their new home of Belle Vue House.”
“Ida was born in Braintree, Essex into a family of drapers,” Carolyn said, “who soon moved to a shop on Maryport Street, Devizes, opposite the top of The Brittox, which they ran from 1888 until 1914. Unfortunately Ida’s father Alfred died in 1896 leaving her mother Alice nee Blake to run the business.” She continued to describe Alice’s six children helping at the shop, and its failure, though Ida was in charge of the millinery department, and how later there was a room in Belle Vue House devoted to her hats. Carolyn told of Ida’s painting hobby, in watercolours, oils and other mediums.
Daphne’s father, James, was known in Devizes as “Jim” or “Jimmy.” He was not Irish but proud of his upbringing off the coast of County Mayo, and “never lost his soft Irish brogue.” His father Arthur Oram was a farmer and land agent in one of the most deprived parts of rural Ireland, hit hard by the famines of the early 1800s, and as such it was a natural breeding ground for agrarian discontent, later producing some prominent members of the IRA. This caused James to be keenly aware of local injustices.
“In 1961, when James took us to see where he was born,” Carolyn expressed, “he told us he was upset that he was not allowed to go to school with his friends. They were Catholic and he was a Protestant and to highlight the differences James and his siblings had to travel to school in Newport by pony and trap, rather than walk to the local school.”
“I feel sure that our father John was correct in saying that if James had stayed in Ireland he would have become a renowned barrister. Unfortunately, just as James left school there was a change in the family’s fortunes as The Congested Districts Board on behalf of the British Government were, quite rightly buying estates and redistributing the land among farmers living on tenanted, uneconomic smallholdings.”
Therefore, instead of attending university at sixteen James travelled to Devizes, to help his uncle (by marriage,) Alfred Hinxman, the manager of the Devizes branch of a Salisbury coal merchant. James lived in Devizes for the rest his life, managing the coal merchant until his retirement. Overseeing the distribution of coal in the southwest during the Second World War, James was so horrified by the profiteering he didn’t take a penny for his efforts and received a MBE.
“James soon became a trusted member of the community,” Carolyn said, “active in its civic life, as a magistrate and a school governor. This included being Mayor of Devizes during The Abdication and coronation of George VI.”
“James also successfully became involved in many businesses including The Devizes Brick and Tile Co. Somehow James also found time for his interest in local history and was a member of various local societies. He could have become wealthy but instead gave away his excess income after ensuring that his family lived in a comfortable style. Every Sunday dinner during the depression of the 1930s they would discuss the families that the brickworks supported, carefully working out if they would have the money to feed their children. The discussion would end by choosing someone who was struggling to hire to cut the Belle Vue House lawn during the following week.”
James’ generous nature rubbed off on his children. Daphne actively supported composers’ rights to royalties while she was a Trustee of The Performing Rights Society in the 1970s. “In particular,” Carolyn noted, “Daphne helped to set up the PRS Members’ Fund that continues to support those registered with the PRS and their families when they are in need of financial help. During the 1980s Daphne arranged Christmas hampers for these families.”
Before Daphne was born the family lived in rooms above the coal merchant’s office at 7 High Street, Devizes. James wanted Belle Vue House, empty at the time but out of his price range, until the state of dilapidation dropped far enough, which was just as Daphne was being born. The house would have been at the end of Belle Vue Road, now replaced by Waiblingen Way housing estate.
Retired designer Paul Bryant, who still resides locally told me he grew up close to Belle Vue House, and recalled her returning to the family home and, “the excitement that was generated when she was awarded grants from the Gulbenkian Foundation.” Paul expressed “it is heartening to see the ancient horse chestnut tree, then at the end of the Oram’s garden, still surviving in Waiblingen Way.” Meanwhile, local musician Peter Easton has written in request for a blue plaque to be erected in Daphne’s honour.
Carolyn explained how the sibling’s engineering abilities can also be traced to the Oram side of the family. “Their great uncle John had designed machinery to make barrels for Rockefeller’s oil, and their uncle Arthur oversaw many civil engineering projects in the Indus Valley, now in Pakistan.”
“Arthur, aged 9 and John, aged 5 were to share a bedroom with an adjoining dressing room that James agreed they would turn into a workshop,” Carolyn said. “They had already started their own tool kits and Arthur was delighted when James added a foot controlled fret saw.”
In a letter to John dated April 2003, Arthur wrote it would be the 77th anniversary of their move from the High Street to Belle Vue House: “Every 20th April was the day of an annual fair on the Green, and Hitler’s birthday. That one in 1926 was a very special wet Tuesday for us. Our mother was taken the half-mile in a big closed Bath Chair drawn by a man holding the long handle in front, because of her illness with a bad knee. She was helped into their old oak bed in the drawing room, on the right of the door towards the fireplace. In that room there was placed, near the door, the old radio that our mother had bought some years before from proceeds of her Barbola work, with its two bright emitter valves and six volt battery, from which we had news through the general strike of 1926.”
“Later the workshop became home to John’s lathe and of great interest to Daphne. John told me that he was sometimes very mean to Daphne when she came to the workshop. At first she had to stay outside the open door and be silent, if she passed that test she was allowed to stand just inside the door for a while before coming closer to John and even helping when possible. John taught Daphne to use a lathe and she had one of his old lathes at Tower Folly, albeit by then worn and no longer a precision tool. John also admitted to teasing Daphne over his Meccano set that she wanted to play with. Daphne had to watch John make, say a crane ,then he would tighten all the nuts and bolts before walking away leaving Daphne to dismantle his work.”
Carolyn said, “there were three main early influences on Arthur, John and Daphne namely their father James, mother Ida and their home which gave them space to both work together and follow their own particular interests.”
I’m eternally grateful to Carolyn Scales, Daphne’s niece, for a fascinating insight into Daphne’s early years and family life, and for the photographs too. It seems her curious childhood nature was focused on what makes music, and her engineering skills were honed early, enhanced by her intrigue and not being allowed to assist by her elder brothers. This led her to create the Oramics Machine, her early synthesiser, built in the 1960s, but lost after her death. We should concentrate our efforts on Daphne’s work in the third part, and how it shaped modern music……
All images are taken with permission from the personal collection of Carolyn Scales with thanks. ©2025 Carolyn Scales. Please ask permission before use.
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