December 2007

MM MM …..

No, not a lip-smacking appreciation of my Vegetarian Christmas Dinner, but a summary of the events of the morning of November 23rd between the Organ Builder (Geoffrey Coffin of Principal Pipe Organs and Sebastian Rowe, our Architect!

It was a Milestone Meeting – and a Meeting of Minds!

This was the first time Geoffrey and Sebastian had been able to share their vision for the restored Organ, and its final appearance in the transept arch. Amazingly, they both have the same vision for the finished project, and were able to share their problem areas and technical issues - sources of potential problems. John, Liz and Roland Gooch were there too, not just to supply coffee, but to add local information, and ask basic questions of our own. Geoffrey was able to confirm he has a formula for calculating the weight of the Organ (how do you do that ?) and Sebastian was pleased to realise that the pipes which were possibly in the way of the Arch are in fact shams, and can be dispensed with in the new location.

So we are now awaiting a detailed drawing and plan that will enable us to get accurate costs for the whole project. In turn, this will allow us to get Church Planning Consent (called a “Faculty”) which then enables us to start making applications to Trusts and Grant making Bodies. We have also bought an up-to-date copy of the Directory of Grant Making Trusts – the fundraisers “Bible”, SATNAV and Road Atlas rolled into one.

So the Project has now reached another stage – we still have to raise the much needed Funds, but we now have to start looking at the technical details, get involved in obtaining the Faculty and also start filling in the many complex and detailed forms required by the various Grant Making Trusts.

The path ahead seems to be forking into many avenues of activity – but we have an excellent team of willing Volunteers who are applying their specific skills to the very different areas of need we have.

We think we are firmly on target for the July 2009 start date that Geoffrey has pencilled in for us – he’s a busy man!  After our meeting Geoffrey leapt in his car to go tune organs in 4 more villages – all beginning with “H” he said, adding that he had 82 more Organs to tune in time for Christmas! Let’s hope he made it!

John and Liz.