wes williams

Very nice work, David. Mention of riveted reeds gives another suggestion for a possible maker - Edward Chidley - who started making them for Wheatstone in the mid 1860s, before taking over the company at the end of that decade. He continued using riveted reeds to the end of the 1890s. He had only been listed as a individual maker since around 1860, so reports of his own concertinas are rare. See here .

Model numbers first appear in the ledgers on C1054 page 214 in January 1884 at #20218 . Earlier entries stated Date or Production Period,Key Count, Materials, and Serial. Their standard range then seems to be Models Nos. 1 to 8 (see page 219 at April 9th 1885).

There are missing Wheatstone ledgers between December 1891 (to 21353) and May 1910 (from 25000) so you could do a rough calculation, but the owner of Wheatstone (Edward Chidley Snr) died in 1899 and the business passed to his sons (Edward Jnr and Percy) who made major changes to the manufacture, and the firm also moved to West Street in 1905, which would both upset a simple calculation.

Thanks Sionainn - The twins are doing well, and although almost identical, one has a tiny mole by his right eye, so we know which is which. Circa 1898 would be our estimate for #160867. For questions on CITES it would probably be better to start a new thread, or ask on an existing CITES one, as your question will become buried in this thread.

Thanks Dave, I may be a little tardy in replies for a while, as identical twin grandsons arrived last week 👨‍❤️‍💋‍👨 and we are helping out with their older sister and brother.

It might have been Ivor Hyde back then ?

Hi Robin, The action suggests that it was built by Lachenal, but might have been supplied to Wheatstone, or sold directly by Lachenals (see Chris Flint's action survey here ). Our estimate for #13106 of circa 1867 for a Lachenal, or circa 1865 if it was Wheatstone, doesn't help. But we do have Metzler badged Lachenal English over a wide range of numbers from #9286 (including #13499) to #25833 (street numbers change to 40s here) when Metzler was buying direct from Lachenal.

There are 53 Metzler labelled concertinas in our Lachenal Project database, both Anglo and English. The address on the label was active 1858 to 1883. If it is a Lachenal we would estimate it as circa 1867. Metzler changed address to 40-43 Great Marlborough St in 1884.

Hi Jill, Your concertina is a Crane system, 48 bone button, with rosewood ends and we would estimate it to have been made circa 1924. Lachenal closed in 1933. I've answered your message to me with a few more details.

We would currently estimate an English 56585 as circa 1917.

The number is from the duet range, and suggests that it might be a Maccann, as there are no reports of Cranes in this number region . Lachenal made both Crane and Maccann systems with 55 keys (+ 1 air).

We would estimate 177207 as circa 1905.

If you want to sell, you could always try the Buy & Sell forum here for some honest offers. Remember that most of the sites you'll find selling concertinas are fully restored items, so their price reflects the work needed to bring them up to standard.

Hi Nick, Gary's reply above more or less nails your instrument as a Crane & Sons Crane/Butterworth system concertina. Dating of these instruments is very speculative as we don't have many reports (~185) but currently we estimate #460 as 1904 and Gary's #55 as 1898. Crane's patent expired around 1910 and the Salvation Army took up the system in 1912. The Lachenal crane series numbers went up to around 1050, and when the SA took over the serials in the existing Maccann series were used. AFAIK nobody has published anything on C&S numbers and their related Lachenal serials, but it would be an interesting thing to study 🙂

You're welcome Nigel. But please post things like this to the Dating A Lachenal From The Serial Number thread in future, as it keeps everything together.