The British Library has launched a new webpage featuring some of their recordings of children's games and songs from the last century. Just had a cursory listen and it sounds great.
"The website is the culmination of a two year project in which we’ve been digitising previously unheard and unseen collections including the internationally renowned ‘Opie Collection of Children’s Games and Songs’ and the ‘Damian Webb/Pitt Rivers Collection’ with support from the AHRC Beyond Text programme. These collections feature audio recordings and photographs made between the 1960s and the 1980s. If, like me, you grew up in that period you’ll hear many familiar though long-forgotten playground rhymes with nostalgia and a Proustian sense of recollection."
Here is a more contemporary recording.
