The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-179 - museum specimen

Hemsby Norfolk Buzzer bullroarer

United Kingdom - Norfolk - Hemsby - Europe

Play / practical

Hemsby serrated buzzer with cord, Haddon fig. 38 no. 8.
Hemsby serrated buzzer with cord, Haddon fig. 38 no. 8. · Public domain Image source
Haddon's full plate of bullroarers from the British Islands.
Representative — not this record’s object. · Haddon's full plate of bullroarers from the British Islands. · Public domain Image source

Buzzer English

Source term: Bullroarer

Buzzer / humming buzzer: Haddon's own Norfolk term (1898:278); this Hemsby specimen is independently matched to no. 8 in his Fig. 38 plate of British bullroarers

Norfolk children called it the humming buzzer, or simply buzzer: a wooden board whirled on a length of string until it growled. This slim, rounded-top example from Hemsby is one of the county specimens Alfred Haddon engraved as No. 8 in his 1898 survey of British bullroarers — the same blade, cord and all, that sits in the Cambridge drawer today.

I have several specimens from different parts of Norfolk, where it is called "humming buzzer," or simply "buzzer"

A. C. Haddon, The Study of Man (London: John Murray, 1898), p.278
Object
Rectangular wooden board, 291 x 35 mm, with triangular notches along both long edges; a bundled, looped cord passes through a hole at the rounded end, the opposite end flat; the specimen itself is figured in Haddon 1898, Fig. 38 no. 8 (p.279).
Function
Boys' toy — Haddon records the Norfolk 'humming buzzer' among the bullroarer toys of English boys; this Hemsby blade is one of his own figured county specimens.
Map confidence
high - Hemsby village-center anchor matching MAA provenance; not a documented use site.
Source location
Page references

MAA 1922.386; Haddon 1898, The Study of Man, Fig. 38 no. 8, p.279 (in-text figure; MAA record cites it as 'Plate 38, Fig. 8' and misdates the book 1908)

View source Open this point on the interactive map