One by one the British prisoners of war raised their lips to the gramophone, reciting the parable of the prodigal son as the First World War raged around them. For two minutes they each told the story of the man with two sons. Then, for the best part of a century, their voices fell silent.

Few remembered the recordings until the leader of a local history project came across the crackle of an unidentified northern male voice. His identity and origin was a mystery.

Now The Times has learnt that he was Philip Jarvis, a former gamekeeper from Alderley Edge, Cheshire, who was recorded in 1917 as part of an experiment by an Austrian scholar fascinated by the rich variety of British dialects.

Born two miles from Macclesfield in 1881, Jarvis grew up in Harebarrow Lodge on the Brocklehurst estate before moving to Northumberland aged 20. He later moved to London, where he worked as a footman and joined the Army aged 34.

The recording was made two years later at a German prisoner-of-war camp. Its discovery has alerted scholars to a unique archive lying unnoticed in a German library. It was just one of hundreds of two-minute readings recorded by men from all over Britain.

Curators at the Imperial War Museum in London say that the collection, which is at Humboldt University in Berlin, is of international importance.

Alan Garner, the author, whose family history is rooted in the village where Jarvis grew up, said that the oral archive would offer Britons an insight into the lives of their ancestors.

He was one of the first people to hear the recording, and guessed correctly that the speaker came from his area.

Delighted that a name had been matched to the mystery voice, Mr Garner said: “I’m excited about this particular example, but of far greater importance is that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other recordings. It gives us a unique view of how all these dialects were spoken. We don’t have recordings of ordinary people, only MPs and royalty, and to have so many, covering the whole country, is of national importance.

“But for scholars of language and linguistics, it is also an international treasure.”

Referring to the brittle shellac on which the items were recorded, Mr Garner said: “For something which is as fragile as eggshells to have survived the First World War, and then be pulled out of the rubble of Berlin after the Second World War is fantastic.”

The author added that little had changed between the dialect spoken by Jarvis and the one with which he grew up.

Researchers hope to trace the soldier’s family. John Adams, the historian and linguist whose research for a local history project about the village led to the discovery, said: “The family is still out there, and we want them to hear this voice. The emotional impact that will have could be extraordinary. Will these descendants, in 2006, speak as strongly as he did? As soon as we hear them, we will have an idea of how dialects have changed.”

Alois Brandl, a Chaucer scholar, dedicated the years from 1909 to 1944 to collecting voices. His collection includes material gathered with the help of his friends Thomas Hardy and Henry Sweet, the original Henry Higgins of My Fair Lady, who was collecting London dialects at the time. He predicted in his autobiography that Britons interested in hearing their forefathers would have to go to the Germans.

Each speaker had to fill out forms, detailing their personal history, and experts recorded their voices in phonetics. In the case of Mr Jarvis, his accent revealed his exposure to other dialects through inconsistencies in pronunciation.

While reading the parable, he says “feyther” for “father”, “deein” for “dying”, but shifts between “man” and the more colloquial “mon”. Mr Adams said: “Language is always evolving. The recording captures a moment in its evolution. New dialects are arriving all the time, for example with Polish people coming from the new EU, or established Pakistani communities — they are the dialects of the future.”

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