The Marylebone Organ

Having been interested in church organs - and their workings - from a young age, one of my hobbies over the years has been repairing and building pipe organs.

There are many different aspects of this story, but the details mentioned here are relevant - as many choir members and their parents (and even Philip Norwood, the vicar) became involved with this once in a lifetime project, for which I am enormously grateful.

In September1986 Mark Sanderson contacted me - to let me know that the magnificent pipe organ in St Marylebone Parish Church in London was going to be scrapped, and did I want to go and have a look at it.

Travelling down by car, we were shown around the inside of the instrument - which had in the region of 5000 pipes (the largest being 32ft tall). The church authorities were planning to pay a demolition firm £8000 to come and remove, and break up the organ, but said that if we were able to remove it, we could have it for nothing, including the magnificent 4 manual console.

This was too good an opportunity to miss, and we agreed there and then to take the organ out over the coming months. The stipulation was that were to remove it all by January 10th 1987, but that some of the organ was to remain in use for the Christmas Services in 1986!

I brought back two sets of 61 smaller organ pipes in a box on the back seat of my car that same day.

Then followed a great many journeys to London (mostly Saturdays) to dismantle parts of the organ, remove sets of pipes, and bring back van loads of parts and pipes on each journey. Choir members and parents became involved - George Bird, Barry Burgess, Adriaan van Egmond, and Colin Booth made weekly trips, and each driver took some of the older choir boys. Pipes from the organ were removed, and each pipe wrapped and labelled by the boys, whilst the adults dismantled and lowered over the balcony larger and heavier parts - wind chests, bellows, etc.

In terms of size, I would estimate the organ was about four times the size of the organ in Spalding Parish Church.

Each time we went (leaving at 7am) we said that we would leave the church by 5pm ... but in reality we kept working later and later - and often did not arrive back home until almost midnight.

The pipes and other parts were stored in various places around Spalding - in several barns, and even a piggery!

Other adults and boys became involved, and Mark Sanderson and his father, Ray, also helped when they were available.

Various memories of these visits come to mind..

Packed Lunch

Inside the church I left a bag with my packed lunch (and a couple of spare light bulbs for the inspection lamp). Whilst working in the church a tramp had come in, and eaten the packed lunch - and taken the two bulbs!

Bellows weights

To give the organ its correct wind pressure, cast iron weights are placed on the bellows. In this instrument there were hundreds of these weights - which we didn't really have a use for. So, when a rag and bone man asked if he could take them, we were very pleased. He loaded up his cart, but had not realised quite how heavy these would be - and the cart broke in two, scattering the weights all over the pavement.

Tears or joy?

On one occasion a lady came into the church - obviously quite distraught, and in tears - asking to see the vicar. He took her into the vestry, and about half an hour later she came out - this time laughing. We all wondered what exactly had taken place in there ...

Ornate Candlesticks

In order to remove the very largest wooden pipes we needed to move one of the enormous brass candlesticks in the sanctuary. Being far too heavy to move, we decided to dismantle it. It consisted of about 50 individual pieces, each located on a central threaded rod. We laid the pieces out carefully in order, and eventually moved the rest. When the time came to rebuild the candle stick, we found that some of the pieces were not in order - so we used the other candlestick as a guide. However, when we got to the end we had one piece left over - and despite our best efforts we could not work out where it was from - so in the end we left that piece off. (I still have it somewhere in my workshop ...)

The large 32ft pipes

The largest pipe in the organ was what was known as a 32ft Open Wood - which in fact was about 36 feet in length, and about 2ft x 2ft - with two-and-a-half inch thick wood. It took us a whole day to remove just one of the largest pipes and the heaviest pipe took 8 people to move it. To get the longest two pipes out of the church, they had to be sawn in half, and the busy road outside the church had to have one lane closed whilst the pipes were removed and loaded into a 40 foot lorry - and the police were not all that impressed.

The longest 12 pipes of this set were sold to St. David's Cathedral in Wales, where they were added to their organ.

Sleeping in the vicarage - and the vestry

The final dismantling and removal of the organ had to take place after Christmas, and a group of us went down to stay for the week at the beginning of January.

One of the Vicars had made a very strange arrangement for us to sleep in his house. He was going to be away, and arranged to leave a key to his house, and his address, on the organ console in the church. On arrival at the church we collected the key and went to the address shown - a large rambling vicarage with plenty of bedrooms for us to use. We set up our sleeping bags on various beds, and set to work on dismantling the organ.

Late that night we went back to the vicarage for what we hoped would be a good night's sleep. Unbeknown to us one of the vicar's sons arrived back from his holiday at about 3am in the morning - and let himself into the house. He was not aware of the arrangement, and found one of us sleeping on top of his bed - he thought the place was full of squatters ...

We spent the rest of the week sleeping in the church - on the floor in the vestry...

Our final job was to load all the rest of the organ onto a 40 foot lorry, driven by one of our choir parents, John Steel. Monday January 6th 1986 (the day before schools began) was our final day - and everyone available came to help in London that day to clear the church of organ parts, and to load the lorry.

Back in Spalding, Philip Norwood organised choir members and parents to be at the piggery in Cowbit to await the arrival of the 40 foot lorry . In the meantime it snowed! Into what became a very late evening everything was unloaded and passed along a chain of helpers - including the very heavy 32ft pipes (which had to be moved on steel rollers as they were much too heavy to lift!)

Everyone went home after eating supper (fish and chips) and the removal project - which had taken almost 4 months - was at last complete.

The organ as it is now

Over the coming years quite a number of sets of organ pipes were sold to recoup some of the costs that had been involved in removal and transportation of the organ back to Spalding.

I decided to rebuild part of the organ, and this is the instrument known as the 'Concert Organ' at my home in The Burtey Fen Collection at Pinchbeck.

Click on this link for more information: Concert Organ

A new chapter all about how we used parts of the London Organ and how the Burtey Fen Collection came to exist will be found in Chapter 30 ...