Over the next few months there is a need to fundraise for repairs for our organ. The estimated cost is upwards of £20,000.

[11th June update: we have met our £26,000 target! We are so grateful to everyone who has donated their time and money so generously, such that we are now able to afford a thorough renovation for the organ. If you would like to donate towards the future running costs of the organ, then you are very welcome to do so, and we will keep this fundraising page open until September.]

[18th May update: we are very pleased to announce that we have been gifted £20,000 from the Henry E. Bass fund for organ restoration. This exceptionally generous gift means that we can now carry out the originally planned works. We have raised our total target now to £26,000 to allow us to add on some additional important maintenance. Thank you for your ongoing support!]

The current organ at St Mary’s was dedicated in 2002. We are very lucky to have three manuals (three keyboard, one above the other – named the Great, the Swell and the Choir) and the pedalboard, which makes it a rather wonderful instrument to have in a church our size. On the other hand, we have a large organ packed into a rather small space, which has made tuning and other maintenance requirements difficult.

In the photo of the three manuals, the Great manual is in the middle (with the stops controlling the sounds it makes on the far right), the Swell manual is at the top (with its stops on the far left) and the Choir manual is at the bottom (with its stops to the left of the Great stops). The pedalboard is controlled by the stops to the right of the Swell stops.

The organ has had twenty years “settling in”, and now it needs a bit of TLC. You may be able to hear the wind leak issues when the organ is running (the hissing sound) and some of the connections to the pedalboard are working loose. Amongst other items, the Swell cornopean (one of the stops, which makes sounds like a reed instrument) needs revoicing, the Choir pipework needs a thorough clean, the Great trumpet needs to be checked, cleaned and repaired, and there are plans to improve access to some of the pipes for our poor organ tuner!

An organ builder is therefore booked to start working on these repairs at the end of May, hopefully to complete them by the middle of July. During this time some parts of the organ won’t be playable, but there should be enough working parts to make a goodly noise throughout.

The organ builder is hoping that following these repairs, no more major expenditure will be needed for the next twenty years or so. The challenge that I and the choir have set ourselves is to raise as much money as possible towards these repairs. Please look out for various events and initiatives that will be taking place over the next few months (these will be advertised in the Link and on the church noticeboard), and please give generously so we can enable the organ to be enjoyed by future generations.