The old organ is taken down
24 September
The builders arrive at All Souls to take down the organ and take some of the parts and the console from Wyke to the workshop for refurbishing and rebuilding. We discover that the wall behind the organ has never been properly sealed and mortar dust and grit from the wall had caused a lot of the damage to the organ.
SWELL PIPES REMOVED AND SWELLBOX BEING DISMANTLED FOR EXTENDING AND REBUILDING
SWELL WINDCHESTS REMOVED
MOST OF THE PIPES AND CASEWORK REMOVED
IT’S GONE (BUT LOOK AT THAT REAR WALL)!
PIES AND PARTS STACKED IN CHURCH AWAITING REFURBISHMENT
Bassoon pipes off to be restored
14 September
Today Emily and I took the sample Bassoon pipes rescued from the demolished organ at St Mary’s, Leek to Booth & Co in Leeds, who will make a new set of 13 matching pipes for a new bottom octave, whilst the rest are being restored by Mike Thompson. These will be the only new pipes in the organ. Although the All Souls organ has a bass reed stop, there were no bass pipes!
Magnets and more pipes
11 August
Work starts on refurbishing magnets that can be re-used and on refurbishing the soundboards from the Nelson organ. We have also been given permission to use the pipes from St Wilfreds – for free! They will become the basis for our third manual division (the Choir division)
Display pipes removed for refurbishment
10 August
Emily and I removed the 27 front display pipes (which are, in fact, dummies), to my own and my mother’s garages (!) where, over the coming months, several layers of poor quality paint will be carefully removed by hand before they are spray-painted in metallic silver Mercedes car paint!
Pipes retrieved from Cotton
15 July
Today I went with our organ builders, M C Thompson go to St Wilfred’s, Cotton to remove and preserve around 200 delicate pipes while we wait for permission from the Archdiocese to use them at All Souls.
Software specification design finished
20 June
I finished designing the software specification, which has been delivered to the software builder (the organ’s stop control system will be operated by a modern programmable software system rather than the old switchgear, which had completely worn out).
Work started in the workshop
New electromagnets fitted on a soundboard
2 June 2014 Work starts in the workshop. The small components for the main wind chests and soundboards are being refurbished – starting with the pallet motors – 450 mini bellows made of wood and sheepskin, and all the new parts have been ordered – mainly around 1,300 electromagnets.
All Souls Organ 