Behind the Copperline studio, past the kitchen with the temperamental kettle, there is a room with no windows and forty radios. They line the walls on pine shelves, they tick as they cool, and every single one of them works. Visitors always ask the same question — where did they all come from? The honest answer: listeners.
It started in 2009 with a 1924 Radiola left on our doorstep in the rain, with a note that read “she still sings”. She does. Our engineer dried her out, re-wound one coil and now she opens every heritage broadcast we do. After that, word got around: if you have a set with a story, Copperline will give it a shelf and an audience.
The Shelves, Abridged
The collection runs the whole history of listening. A breadboard crystal set you still have to tune with a cat’s whisker. A bakelite beauty that survived a house fire. A chrome 90s boombox that needs four size-D batteries and sounds, frankly, enormous. School groups press their noses to the glass of the 60s transistor wall and cannot believe music once came out of something with no screen at all.
“If you have a set with a story, Copperline will give it a shelf and an audience.”
The engineers’ favourite is the one they fight over: a battered shortwave portable that picks up shipping forecasts, number stations and — on clear winter nights — a fishing fleet off another continent. It sits by the overnight desk, because of course it does.
Visit on Open Saturday
The receiver room opens to visitors every first Saturday of the month, and each set gets its fifteen minutes on air during heritage week. If you have a radio with a story gathering dust in an attic, write to us — shelf forty-one has your name on it.
