The first week of August saw me playing a lunchtime recital at Chesterfield beautiful Parish Church – with its famous twisted spire.
It’s a fine 4-manual instrument, the very solid console being by Wood of Huddersfield, most of the organ being by Lewis and Henry Willis III, thoroughly and effectively rebuilt by David Wood’s team back in 1988.
A few days after the Chesterfield recital I paid a visit to the Henry Groves organ workshops at Ilkeston. The boss, Jonathan Wallace, showed me the work they were doing on two of my projects – the rebuilding of the fine 3-manual Keates organ in St Augustine’s church, Sheffield, and the building (with Renatus) of a clever little 1972 HNB formerly in Bathford, for Chetham’s Music School. More on those soon.
On August 14th I paid one of my regular visits to the Royal Northern College of Music, to see how the Rieger voicers were getting on with the tonal finishing. The very fine 1972 Hradetzky organ has been fully overhauled and cleaned, made safer to tune and fitted with an entirely new Rieger mechanical action, new electrics and a restored and updated console.
This new rollerboard, just behind the console, is one element of the new key action.
This is the new coupler chassis in the console, seen from the rear. The new action is superb and replaces a typical 1972 action, full of worn-out needle-bearings etc.
This is the organ with the scaffolding still up. Next month I’ll post photos of the completed project.
August 18th saw me in Oxford, to survey the beautiful – if currently neglected – 1790 Donaldson organ.
The Great is playing pretty well, but the over-complex action to the Swell is scarcely functioning. It would be a real delight were this elegant instrument to be brought back into full playing condition; it has not been tuned, I suspect, since the year 2000!
Having finished my work in the Holywell Music Room I visited two other ‘Hale projects’ in Oxford. First was the little Fr. Willis at Summertown, now overhauled beautifully by Simon Brown, followed by Anthony Hall (of Clevedon Organs) working on installing a wooden Willis Violone behind the organ. This work should be finished in the autumn – photo then. After that I drove on to St Barnabas, the famed Anglo-Catholic basilica-style building by the canal in Oxford’s Jericho. Here, Henry Willis & Sons are installing an organ based on fine Fr. Willis pipes and soundboards from two organs made in 1876.
This photo shows the restored Open Wood pipes in place. The two Fr. Willis organs from which this instrument is being created were made for St Paul’s, Bow Common (used by Mander in their Sheffield Cathedral organ, since removed) and from Bargeddie parish church, Lanarkshire.
This is the view from the back of the spacious chamber. It shows the new building-frame in place, with the reservoirs and slider soundboards just about visible. The blower and wind control valves await installation. In such a fine acoustic, this ‘best period’ Father Willis pipework should sound magnificent.
At the end of August we attended the wonderful Southwell Music Festival, of which I have no photos to show; you can visit its website instead!