The Wingfield Organ.

Research output: Non-textual formArtefact

  • D. Gwynn
The Wingfield soundboard was found in 1995 at Wingfield church in Suffolk, in the coffin-house in the churchyard, with assorted lumber. It is made of a single piece of walnut, with slider sliders, bearers and upperboards. The surviving fragment cannot be dated accurately. There is as yet no possibility of tree-ring dating. It has sliders, and the first reference to stops in an English organ is at Westerham in Kent in 1511/12, where the organ was 'to be made with iii stoppis after the new making'. It is unlikely to have been made after 1560, or between 1547 and 1553. The 1530s and 1540s seem most likely.The assumption has to be that this soundboard always lived in this church, and that it was the organ which Gillingwater saw in 1796, and was told about as standing on the north side of the chancel. There are differences with continental organs of the same period. It seems likely that this organ was made by a local builder, from local materials.The pipes are all open, and made of oak. The pipes in the front (and the back) are the Principal and a 5ft rank, the inside pipes consist of two Octave ranks and two Fifteenths. The Principal has no slider, but the other four ranks can all be drawn separately. The pitch and scaling of the stops are indicated by the spacing and the toehole sizes on the old soundboard.The key compass is F to a² without g#², 40 notes, which is the number of grooves in the Wingfield soundboard. The nominal pitch is 5ft, i.e. a fourth above singing pitch. 5ft Principal ranks were the basis of the two organs mentioned above.See also http://www.earlyorgans.org.uk/wf1.htm and two articles by the author (provided in portfolio)
Original languageEnglish
PublisherUnknown
Medium of outputPhotograph
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2002
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