Church Organ Restoration
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As many of you know, the church is closed at present for safety. It has scaffolding up in order to remove the organ for restoration. The restoration will take approximately a year.
In the interim, church services will be held in the village hall. There is a plan to buy a keyboard so that Keith Howard, our organist, can give us music and accompany the hymns!
The scaffolding will be removed after remedial work is done to the floor of the Minstrels Gallery and plastering done on the wall behind...
The J. Halmsaw & Sons organ is of considerable historical interest having been made by a local Birmingham organ builder; of particular note are the beautiful hammered lead pipes. Also, it is being placed in a Minstrels Gallery, where unusually the organist can be seen by the congregation/audience.
The whole process is very slow—church wheels move slowly—and also costly!
A very generous donation was given by Steven Trembath on the passing of his dear mother Andrée, who was so much a part of the village; her husband played the organ as did Steven. We have two further generous grants from the Oxford Historical Churches Trust and Church Care.
R & S Young Organ Builders Ltd. are doing the restoration. Richard Young is a very experienced organ builder; his father was also an organ builder. He is passionate about his work; based in Rugby, he's much in demand and had to finish working on the Charlecote organ before he could start here on the Halmshaw organ in Wroxton.
When it is restored, we can look forward to an organ recital!
