There is very little UK audio material available free online; we don't get the funding over here that makes resources like those provided by the Library of Congress, for example, possible. It's also true that the "free download" culture that has developed over the last few years tends to lead many people to imagine that in some fashion they "deserve" to be given vast resources freely and at no cost or even marginal effort to themselves.

Somebody has to do all the necessary work, though, and somebody has to pay for it. The only significant collection of recorded material from UK traditional musicians that I know of at present is the Farne Archive, which concentrates mainly on the North Eastern tradition, and has been mentioned here quite a bit since it finally went live recently. It is generously funded by various arts organisations.

A great deal more could be achieved if funders in Britain valued national heritage in the way that other countries do, rather than, as is mainly the case here, assigning resources principally to modern, ephemeral fashion and to bourgeois "art" music of the kind traditionally preferred by the arts establishment.