Update January 2010

 

What’s Happening to the Organ?

It’s all gone Quiet.

“Oh no it Hasn’t !”

 

It might be the Panto season, “Oh yes it is!”, but despite appearances there is still a lot going on.

 

Because of the large number of services in church during December, it would have been unrealistic for the gallery building contractors to break off frequently, so they were asked not to work during the build up to Christmas. But we are still in touch with them about ongoing work, and they will be back in January to finish the gallery and the area underneath. The gallery handrail will not be fitted until the organ has been re-installed. The organ parts have to be lifted over the front edge of the gallery, as many are far to big to go up the staircase.

 

The workshops of Principal Pipe Organs, who are doing the restoration have been visited twice, and the work in progress photographed as a record.  Some images will be included in the visual display which will be installed under the organ. The restoration work is progressing very well indeed, and they tell us that they have commenced re-building the organ in the workshop.  They have been very helpful in allowing us to take photo’s, and we will get the final set in early January. We anticipate that the re-installation will commence in late January 2010. It will take longer to rebuild than it did to remove!   

 

Our application to the Heritage Lottery for the second payment of the award, a further £20,000, was submitted in late December and we are awaiting their decision on our progress report.  This second request could not be made until we had spent the initial grant payment of £25,000.  The funds from payment 2 of the award are required for further progress invoices from contractors due in January and February 2010.  The Lottery require a further progress report, due in May for the final £5,000 of the award, which is only made on project completion. We are still required to complete our volunteer timesheets in readiness for the final payment request, so please keep them coming.

 

The preparation of the software for the Visual Display is also well advanced.  This will include a record of the restoration and building work, and an outline of how a pipe organ works.  It has been a once in a lifetime opportunity to get detailed images of a completely disassembled organ. In line with the Heritage Lottery learning requirements, we will include a brief church history, some information on St. Mary’s educate & inform outreach, and hopefully some sound clips of music played on the restored organ.

 

So we can’t say, “It’s behind you”, rather we are looking forward to the project being finished early in 2010.

 

 

Happy New Year.