We find a console!

Good quality, solid wood, drawstop organ consoles very rarely come onto the market, and after 4 years of searching, we had given up and settled for an old refurbished Compton console, then our luck changed.  St George’s Anglican Church in Whyke, Chichester had been left two considerable legacies which the parish decided to spend on a smallish, but brand new pipe organ.  Their ‘old’ console was surplus to requirements, was made of solid medium oak (which matched our casework) and was in relatively good condition and not very old.  It was also capable of taking three keyboards.

Keith Ainsworth heard that it might be available, immediately went to look at it and decided that it met all our needs (and sent photos to our organ builder, who agreed).  Two days later, Keith and Roger Lanigan (father of our young organist, Emily) drove down to Chichester and collected the console, pedal boards and the organ bench and brought them back to All Souls.  We are very grateful to all our new friends in Whyke.  We now have gained a really good looking console which will, once it has been refurbished and kitted out, have the correct layout to make it a perfect instrument for teaching youngsters to play the organ – one of our objectives, and perfectly match our existing casework.

St Mary’s, Leek

Keith and Fr Peter Jones were, in 2012, asked to survey the main organ in St Mary’s, Leek, Staffordshire (the church has 2 pipe organs!) to advise on whether it should be restored.  After a ceiling collapse and rainwater ingress it was completely unplayable.  They advised that a complete rebuild would be required, at a cost of between £150,000 – £200,000, but the organ had little artistic merit or historical significance, so it would not attract grant funding and no-one would want to buy it.

There was no way in which the parish could raise this amount, even if it could be justified.  Most of the pipes were too badly damaged to be re-used, but some ranks looked ok, so Keith took sample pipes away, cleaned and restored them, and then tested them on another organ.  Only 2 stops were really usable – an 8′ Oboe (although some of the higher notes were unrepairable) and an 8′ Bassett Horn (really a soft Clarinet), which sounded beautiful.  They appeared to have been made by Hill, a famous late Victorian organ builder (who made most of the pipes in the organ in Birmingham Town Hall), rather than by the actual builders of the organ.

Once the Archdiocese Historic Churches Commission had authorised the removal and scrapping of the organ, Keith “rescued” the the 2 good stops and placed them in storage in the hope that we might be able to use the Clarinet in the proposed Choir division at All Souls, and that the diocese might find a use for the Oboe.  In fact, it turned out that, once we had decided to place the Nelson swell 16′ soft bourdon outside the swellbox, there was room on the swell windchest for a soft 16’Bassoon (which would give us a proper swell reed chorus as well as a nice soft solo stop) so the Leek Oboe has been re-modelled and will become our swell Bassoon.

St Wilfrids, Cotton

This historic listed Pugin church remained in use after the closure of adjacent Cotton College, but developed severe dry rot and its tiny parish could not afford the millions required to restore the church.  It was closed in 2010 and the Archdiocese has spent the last few years salvaging fixtures, fittings and artworks for use in other churches in the diocese.  Keith surveyed the organ in 2012 and it was agreed that it had, as a complete instrument, little artistic and no historic merit and so could not be sold or relocated.

In July 2104 the Archdiocese determined that the Church would never be opened and a Faculty was granted for the removal of the organ (except for the facade).  We were advised of this and told that we must act immediately.  Keith and our organ builders immediately went up to Cotton and salvaged all of the limited amount of pipework that was of good quality and of the same style and age as that of the Nelson organ, and one or two other parts.  Suddenly, we had all of the pipework and some other parts that we needed for our hoped-for Choir division!  We then had to re-think the design.

St Johns Methodist Church, Bloxwich

This modern church had a large organ that and been built about 25 years ago, mainly using old pipes .  The build quality was dreadful and the organ was failing rapidly and in need of a major rebuild.  The congregation was reluctant to embark upon such a product when it had been given the chance to buy an almost new, high quality digital electric organ at a very competitive price, so that was acquired and much of the pipework and the console from the pipe organ had to be removed urgently so that the new organ could be installed.

Mike Thompson, our principal organ builder, was invited to salvage anything that would be useful, and we gained a pedal trombone stop and a mixture stop, both of which were good quality, contemporary with the Nelson organ and capable of being revoiced and refurbished for us.  In addition, although the Bloxwich console was not worth salvaging as a single item, most of its fittings were relatively new, could be easily refurbished (if necessary,by the original manufacturers of the parts) and most of the stop knobs had the same names engraved on them as we will be having, so they could all be fitted into the refurbished console from Whyke.