It's an Abbott and Smith!

[oopsorganist]

Our organ!

I just found one on the NPOR list with exactly the same Great voices/stops and pretty much the same on the Choir voices too, same size pipes on the pedals...
described as
" a dull mix of 8 and 4 foot stops" 1890 - Abbott and Smith. St Andrews Epworth Lincs.

This is exciting because it pretty much nails the maker of the organ, but sad - because I was hoping for something a lot more exotic and rare.

I even found a couple of A and S with stops over the manuals as ours has, one of a similar date even has a flat pedal board, all the music desks are of a type and some have painted pipes (ours were once decorated with chevrons and such like).
Ah well.

[musicus]

Well done for tracking it down, oops. (I once regularly played - if that's the right word - an appalling hotch-potch of an church organ which upon investigation turned out to have been an organ builder's DIY house organ, cobbled together from bits and pieces from his factory (which, though well-known, shall remain nameless).

Whay do we know about Abbott and Smith? Did they achieve greatness anywhere?

and some have painted pipes

Were they pink?

[oopsorganist]

Woah musicus
our pipes are painted gold!

We have two verdicts on the organ. The man who maintains it thinks it is a pile of rubbish. (Cobbled together from bits in the factory like as not). Another well known expert thinks it has the best sound of any organ for miles around. ( Not when I play it though, more Abbott and Costello). There were once 60 of this make of organs in the Leeds area alone. The only thing about our organ is that it is very much a budget model with a case which is a pastiche of a very famous organ in the Town Hall. There are two with Certificates both bigger models. Ours survives because it is mechanically simple if falling apart a little.

If I had any kind of mind I would remember more from all the googling around I have done over the years. Or developed a method which would have got me here sooner.....I have read much and retained nothing..... I shall take the same approach to the new translations perhaps.

But we now have two places to go for further records Wakefield has some records for company documents and maybe the firm that took over - was it Wadsworth or Wordsworth? It is fun having a bubble brain. Hours of happy distracted research ahead.

[nazard]

They were capable of some reasonably good work. This may well be their best:

http://www.npor.org.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi?Fn=Rsearch&rec_index=R00642

I believe that the installation and voicing of it was supervised by a certain Professor Stanford (known as Professor Satanford to his students), so it may well have been better than their usual. I certainly always enjoyed listening to it, but I never got to play it.

[musicus]

...our pipes are painted gold!

I was teasing!