Since my visit to Ridlington Church I have been in communication with parishioner, Martin Wall a former music teacher, who runs the local singing group. He has had access to the instruments and has previously carried out research and kindly provided the following observations.
“The clarinets were made by Robert Wolf in 1843/4. We can be sure of the dates as they are stamped ‘Robert Wolf, St Martin Le Grand’. Wolf moved premises from 79 Cornhill to St Martin Le Grand in 1843. He died in 1844.
They are all simple system – i.e. the few keys that are present serve only to cover holes beyond the player’s reach (+ plus the register key on the back). There are no kays for non-diatonic notes, and these would have been achieved by ‘forked’ fingering (as on a recorder). At some point Wolf and his partner Christopher Gerock worked with Boehm on a chromatic key system for flutes.
The four instruments: two are of the same length, one being marked ‘B’. This will have been an indication that it was pitched in B flat (following the German notation system where H is B natural and B is B flat). The next smallest is perhaps pitched in E flat. The fourth is very small/high-pitched - perhaps some sort of soprano clarinet.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to get them to sound, beyond an open G (concert F) on the two B flats.
I have found a reference to a flute made by Wolf which is tuned to modern pitch, A=440, so it is likely that all of his instruments were made to this pitch.
The flute is by a different maker (yet to be identified with certainty) and is pitched in F. This would make it a flauto traverso equivalent of the Baroque flauto a bec.
The bassoon The brass horn was made by John Köhler. He was a member of a family of instrument makers, spanning many generations, living near the German town of Kassel. He joined the Royal Lancashire Volunteers on 1st July 1782. After the Regiment was disbanded, his trade card claimed he had been Master of the Regiment’s Band. An illustration on this trade card shows several brass instruments as well as a brass horn listed as a ‘bassoon top’.
His family company continued making brass instruments until1907.
The extra amplification this ‘top’ provides would have been necessary for the bassoon to be effective in an otherwise brass band playing outdoors. It would not have been necessary when playing with a small church band. It is not known how it came to be used in Ridlington Church.”
Following Martin’s most useful information I ferreted out an informative article about the work of the Köhler family in the Historic Brass Society Journal 2004 .
“There is no reason to suppose that the output of the earliest Köhler workshops differed in any way from the standard models of horn, trumpet, etc., and were similar to those made in other London workshops. There is also an eight-keyed bassoon with brass keys and mounts bearing the stamp of George Astor (“G [xA]STOR [& C][o] / LO[N]DO[N]”) in Ridlington Church, Oakham, with a copper bell by John Köhler, inscribed near the rim “John Köhler Maker Whitcomb Street London.” The bell is probably an example of a “Bassoon top” as listed and depicted—to the right of the central motif—on Köhler’s trade card.”
Lance Whitehead and Arnold Myers, 'The Kohler Family of Brasswind Instrument Makers' Historic Brass Society Journal (ISSN 1045-4616), 2004, 16, pp.89-123.