A CAPACITY audience filled the Burgage Hall last Friday, (April 1), to celebrate the return of the Ledbury lute, and to give local people a chance to hear the unique instrument being played by an expert.

The instrument, which dates back to Regency times, may be the only one of its kind in existence and it has recently been restored, to playing condition, by Chris Egerton, a stringed-instrument conservator and restorer who works at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Mr Egerton gave a talk about the lute, to a packed Burgage Hall, and the rare instrument was then played by Taro Takeuchi, an internationally early stringed instrument performer and researcher.

Chris Johnson, vice chairman of the Ledbury and District Society, which runs the Butcher Row Museum, where the lute was discovered said: "The talk and performance went very well, and we had to use the balcony in the Burgage Hall, as well as downstairs. We've had 100 people in the past coming to Civic Society meetings, but this was the biggest turnout we've had in quite a long time.

"We had a couple of people from the Lute Society there, who had travelled from the Craven Arms, and we had 12 new people join as members of the Civic Society."

Mr Johnson added: "The lute sounded fantastic."

Now the Civic Society is deciding how best to manage security for unique instrument, and this will probably entail purchasing a new display cabinet for it.

The lute was spotted by chance last year, by a Lute Society visitor to the museum, and he sent photographs of it to Mr Egerton.

The Victoria and Albert Museum has a lute which is similar, but is not quite the same; which makes the Ledbury instrument unique, to the best of anyone's knowledge.

Chris Johnson described the Ledbury instrument as "halfway between a small harp and a true lute".