RETIRED civil servant and keen musician Charles Birch has stepped back in time to make history come alive. Charles, who lives in Watchet, could be the only person in the UK and even further afield to recreate a centuries-old tradition of making instruments from old boxes. The unusual hobby developed more than a decade ago after Charles bought a book which told the story of how people in the 18th and 19th centuries without access to conventional instruments - probably due to cost - made them from old chocolate or other wooden boxes. Two examples of these were on display at Cadbury's Museum in Keynsham until 1979 and are now believed to be in private ownership near Bristol. But within the book which Charles bought were two prints showing box fiddles. One was of an American soldier playing a cigar box fiddle in about 1852 during the American Civil War, while the other showed two men playing chocolate box fiddles about 1900. Using these old prints, Charles set about making his own chocolate box fiddle from the remains of an old drawer. He carved the neck from beech and found pegs, strings and a bridge. When it was completed it was tested and, although it was not expected to be in the Stradivarius class, the sound was better than had been thought possible. Meanwhile Charles' wife Angela, an artist, decorated the sides of the new instrument to match the old print. Since then, with the loan of a cello as a guide and using some more scrap wood, plus the necessary strings, Charles went on to make a cello and later again, using parts of a scrap piano, a double bass was built. Once again, Angela decorated the boxes to match illustrations of packaging boxes which had been supplied by Opies' Packaging Museum - formerly in Wigan, now London-based. Another fiddle and a viola are currently in production and now Charles is looking for local musicians keen to form a 'box band'. "The sound is pretty good really," said Charles. "A lady from Brompton Ralph has already tried out one of the instruments but I'd like to get more people involved. "Making the instruments is the relatively easy part of the process - getting people to try out and play them is more difficult. "However, I'm determined that it will not be a case of if I get a band together, but when." Charles, whose interest in music stems back to the 1940s, already plays 'real' instruments with two church bands, based at St Decuman's in Watchet and St Andrew's in Old Cleeve. He is pictured playing the box cello which was decorated by Angela. lSee Kwinty's Comment on Page 4 Photo: Keith Wiseman.