THE ORGANS OF ST MARY’S
THE JOHN GRAY ORGAN
The first organ, built by John Gray of London, was reputed to have done duty as a temporary instrument in Westminster Abbey before being installed in the new church of St Mary the Virgin, Bathwick in 1820 at a cost of £200. This was a three-manual and pedal instrument with two neo-Gothic cases, a main case and a choir case, and was situated in the West Gallery. In 1878 it was sold to the Congregational Chapel in Salisbury, then being built, and did service there until the mid-1970s when this church was considerably reordered and the organ became surplus to requirements.
Thanks to the timely intervention of the British Institute of Organ Studies, it was eventually found a new home in the Musikinstrumenten-Museum in Berlin, where it may still be seen – and played.
The specification of this instrument is as follows
THE FATHER WILLIS ORGAN
The organ of St Mary’s Church was built by Henry Willis in 1878 and completed in 1894. It then had mechanical action with a pneumatic lever for the Great Organ.
The organ’s subsequent history was not uneventful. The actions were changed to pneumatic by Hele & Co. in 1904, when some adjustments were made to the voicing in the style of the time; the Great Mixture was recast, the Pedal Trombone was extended to form a Tuba, and an Echo Bourdon rank was added to the Pedal. Further work carried out by Hill Norman & Beard in 1932, when a new console was provided. In 1980 the Exeter firm of Eustace & Alldridge converted the console and key actions to electro-pneumatic and carried out some revoicing work which was aimed at mitigating the earlier changes.
Fortunately, the essentials of Father Willis’s tonal design survived these interventions. The work of 2024 amounted to a comprehensive overhaul; the wind system, which had suffered alterations over the years, was conservatively replanned, the internal layout was improved, and the pipework received detailed attention with Willis’ characteristic style as the touchstone.
