IN 2001 and 2002 the organ-builders Goetze and Gwynn completed reconstructions of two pre-Reformation organs for The Early English Organ Project. These instruments were based on surviving soundboards, made c. 1520–40 and found in the coffin-house at Wingfield Church and in a house in Wetheringsett, both in Suffolk. Two chance archaeological finds transformed our knowledge of English pre-Reformation organs, which had previously relied on the surviving (but much restored) organ-case at Old Radnor in Powys and documentary evidence, and offered the best opportunity yet available to explore the repertory. Questions remain about precisely how representative these two instruments are of pre-Reformation English organs, how they relate to contemporary Continental and later British organs, and how and when they were used in church.

Almost as fragmentary as the physical and documentary evidence of the nature and use of organs is the surviving repertory of pre-Reformation liturgical organ music – some 162 pieces. That repertory raises further questions about its use in worship, its relationship to sung chant, faburden and pricksong, and its continuing relevance in the teaching of compositional methods and keyboard playing after the Reformation. For all these uncertainties, the reconstruction of the organs, the publication of modern editions of the repertory, and the studies of institutions and repertories make available a far wider pool of evidence than there was sixty years ago when Denis Stevens edited Thomas Mulliner's anthology, The Mulliner Book (Lbl Add. MS 30513), as the inaugural volume of Musica Britannica published in 1951.

The patchy archival evidence suggests that in the first half of the sixteenth century organs were being made in significant numbers for urban parish churches, as well as for collegiate, chantry and monastic institutions. The Wetheringsett organ (as well as extant parish records and wills) suggests that organs may have been acquired in wealthier village churches as well. In some cases, the dissolution of a monastery offered a parish church the opportunity to acquire the redundant organ.4 The fortunes of the organ changed significantly during the long English Reformation. By 1552 most organs were devoid of liturgical purpose, though many seem to have escaped the destruction and removal accorded to altars and statues.