Found this on YouTube. An Island off Virginia, where people still use the old East Anglian accent.
Sounds like a Southerner and an Aussie had a bastard child, fell out and the kid spent six months a year with each.
Interestingly, I learnt recently that several Amercian accents became non-rhotic in the 19thy century, (like in the UK) but reversed in the mid 20th. A recording from the early 1930’s, with older men talking displays that.
Yeah, the stereotypical Boston “Hahvahd Yahd” is non-rhotic, as well as older New York and southern accents. And England has some rhotic regions (and the UK as a whole; Scotland and NI are mostly rhotic).
I don’t know if it’s fair to say British accent though? Those aren’t static, either, and while the Virginia accent was holding on, English accents got more or less rhotic.
According to the history of the English language course I took in college, people in New England and the Appalachians sound the most like the British settlers who arrived in the US did in the 1600-1700s (the author did not explain, but we took this to mean the settlers in these two regions were originally from different parts of England). Even compared to modern-day Brits, if that author is to be believed.