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Who was Wilcox? I asked this question before.[1] Now we know he was George, for we find in the vestry minutes of 5. Botolph Bishopsgate, for 2 and 17 March 176312] that the same builders as before, John By field Junior, George Wilcox, & Thomas Knight, erected an organ there, opened by John Stanley 12 October the following year. Is this partnership known anywhere else? The previous referenced] was to Banbury Parish Church, which, after Cox's work in 1842[3] was rebuilt in divided form with electric action by Bryceson in 1858, rebuilt by Walker north of the chancel in 1874, altered slightly by Martin in 1882, and completely rebuilt in 1925 by Hill, Norman & Beard, fin attribution to Snetzler seems to have surfaced somewhere between the last two dates, and some pipework to have been pointed out as his; but the records are definitely By field, Wilcox A Knight. The point to be noticed is that By field II was involved elsewhere where dubious Snetzler attributions have been made, and one wonders whether this has anything to say to us. An enquiry received concerns an organ with the label 'Appointed by the Lords of the Admiralty Organ Builders to Her Majesty's Government, I.S.Dane & Sons Organ Builders Swansea 1875'. My cupboard is bare. Nor can I help much about 'White of London'. 1 am told that C.White & Son of Burntwood Lane S.W.17 made one with electric action, extension, and some duophnne pipes for Wavendon Methodist, Bucks. George White & Son of Tooting (Snape, 19357) could be confused initials for the same firm. White of Tottenham is credited with an electric action instrument at Thorpeness. But about none of th°se have I any first hand knowledge. There were other Whites about but too early for the present enquiry. 'By field, John fl 1830. Wood Engraver. No details of his life recorded'[4] sounds as though he might be a member of the famous family. I found an interesting gravestone in Warston Lane Cemetery, Birmingham: 'Sacred to the memory of Ann Harriott Green, died April 22nd 1871, aged 45 years; and William Green her husband, died April 5th 1878, aged 63 years. Also Emma Eliza By field their daughter, died July 5th 1881, aged 32 years'. Someone in that area might find this By field and Green partnership worth following up. When Merchant Taylors' School was at the Charterhouse site, Father Willis (whose sons Henry and Vincent went to school there) removed the old organ (if any) and in 1885 put up the old organ from Holy Trinity Twickenham, where he had erected a new organ. Two stops from this Hedge land organ went into the 1933 Willis at Moor Park. Particulars are requested of the Hedgeland and of any of its predecessors. The same correspondent asks about Trinity Congegational, Mile End New Town. Ina book ofabout189015] some old oak-framed cottages at Cowthorpe (near Wetherby) are referred to. 'Two of these, which now combine workshop and residence for the village joiner - a man of some fame as an organ-builder - also mark the spot, tradition says, where Guido Fawkes spent many of his youthful days ...' Organ builder not named, 'f^iddlesmoor ... church is a modern erection but takes the place of a very old chapel built and consecrated in the year 1484 ... At present the church boasts an oroan, which, however, is a recent aquisition. The musical part of the service used to be led by a number of brass [sic] instruments, the bassoon especially being named as one ... The parish records of Kirby Malzeard show the following items as having been paid in the year 1555:- "To the Prest of ^ydlesmore for mendyng the organ, viij s. for nay-Is for the organ, iij s. J d.".' There were several people making collections of accounts of organs in the last century, in addition to Sperling and companions. One such was Robert Willson Nottingham, one-time organist of S. Mary Rotherhithe, who is mentioned in Hamilton's 'Catechism of the Organ' (1834) as possessing a manuscript 'which contains a full account of organs in and around London, as well as many others all over England'. Austin Niland has been in touch with R.W.N.'s great great grandson, who has described his remembrances of the Ms. with 'pencil drawings of church organs' and the use of the old long esses. It has disappeared. Some 45 years ago an octogenarian parishioner, long widowed, told me that her husband, Ben Shepherd then of Bath, had made a collection himself, and she promised me the gift of them if she could find them. She couldn't. 10 Please keep your eyes peeled for any such collections; and if you have one, please arrange that your descendants (or more likely their wives) are well supplied with alternative methods of lighting fires. More organ builder queries. Harmston appears inside the soundboard at Penmark; I am told there is no evidenceof builder otherwise. Robert Walker c.1850 is said by a local organ builder to have been the maker of the organ at Llantwit Major, now labelled C.H.Walker. Harston & Son, Newark & Tamworth, fl. 1912, is the nearest 1 can get to the former, and R.W. I know not. Inside the bellows of an organ somewhere near Cambridge was written: 'This organ was the property of J.D.Kennard, 13 High Street, Margate, Kent, October 1868; purchased from the Trustees of the Royal Assembly Rooms in consequence of the death of the proprietor, Mr. Gardner; built by Longhurst, London, Father of Mr. Longhurst, of Canterbury Cathedral. Rebuilt, pedals added, &c., by J.D.Kennard.' Illumination requested. Bellows weights at Icklesham bear the inscription 'Joseph Hartley', each name on a separate weight. I suppose he is Joseph J. Hartley of Tonbridge but I know nothing of him bar his name, and cannot date him. He also appears on a bellows weight in the 1890 Henry Fincham organ at Membury in Devon. Another enquiry concerns an advertisement for R.Tubb & Sons, Liverpool, who moved in 1895 to 24 Clifford Street and exhibited there an organ 'built on a somewhat new principle'. What? In August 1918, Freeman records, he made the acquaintance of a bureau organ in the house of a Mr. Goolden near Cookham. It had naturally been said to be a Father Smith but Freeman attributed it to Snetzler. Stops were 884 II actuated by wooden levers at the ends of the keyboard. It had stood in the house, whose name may have been The Grove, since about 1850; does anyone know of its present whereabouts? The late G.W.Hole of Sculthorpe and latterly London possessed an organ labelled John Kellingburgh 1676 to which Thomas Knight had added barrels, cymbals, and drums. He also possessed a short compass f Snetzler soundboard given to his father about 1900 by an organ builder whom he had assisted, bearing the autographed date 2743 (which I have seen). I had been told that this was from the organ which Snetzler gave to his own church, German Calvinistic Chapel of the Savoy; but Hole wrote to me that it came from the Moravian Chapel in Fetter Lane. The Calvinistic organ had only one manual anyway[6].Fetter Lane did have the requisite 4-slider f Swell, and seems to have come from the Charterhouse. A slight puzzle here. Charterhousedates for new organs seems to have been 1626, 1662, 1753, 1842; so was the organ elsewhere before 175J? 1841 was the date when the Snetzler went to Fetter Lane[8] and was rebuilt by Walker, who put a new organ in Charterhouse the next year. In Battley's notes the f Swell has 6 stops. In 1898 one A.I.Hunter of Cat ford rebuilt the organ, as recorded[9] by Freeman. Accordingto Rimbault G.P.England built an organ for this Fetter Lane chapel[10]. Neither Sperling nor Batlley says anything about this, mentioning only Snetzler and Walker. Yet when the chapel closed about 1920 the case and front pipes went to Yoxford in Suffolk, where they may still be seen[ll], and an attribution to England is more than likely. The insertion of a centenarian Snetzler into the case of a comparatively new England seems odd - and surely Sperling or H.H.B. would have had some inkling? On Hole's death the soundboard passed into the possession of Noel Mander; the fate of the 'innards' in 1920 seems unrecorded; and that of the Kellingburgh I know not. This had belonged to the Earl of Rutland and was removed from Belvoir Castle after the fire in 1816; and the Duke of Poltinano had it in Swinstead Hall. 1] Reporter v.1.10; |