A place close to my heart, for I was a parishioner for many years, and organist/choirmaster for most of my happy days there.
This is the 1885 Conacher we relocated from Ballinrobe, Co. Mayo. It is one of about 10 organs we have saved by way of relocating to date.
In the chancel is a very charming organ by Dublin builder William Browne. It is however too quaint and wrongly located in the room to work properly. Rather than try and fix the inherent problems (which would inevitably had meant ruining what is a very nice organ) we fitted another one altogether, on the gallery. We designed and fitted an extension specifically to accommodate the organ.
We kept this organ as original as possible, but a few alterations were carried out. The principal choruses dearly required rescaling, as the sound was too thin. I will pop in sometime and get a photo of the Browne organ for the sake of completeness), suffice to say it now has tonnes of fundamental tone. All other pipes were retained, untouched. The flutes on the Great are especially nice.
Swell Oboe and Open Diapason 8 were revoiced by Aiden Scanlon......both to great effect. The diapason gently crescendos towards the treble, making the top note played always distinguishable. The Great Salicional migrated to the Swell (on a clamp) to act as a Celeste, and a 12th was fitted in its place.
It all works fine. My thanks to Canon Horace McKinley and Mr. Reg Richards (parishioner) for supporting me from beginning to end on this project.
I wouldn't want to be relying on maintenance on this organ for a living.........it has hardly needed any attention since we fitted it!
The music desk had a new slip of oak applied at the time........the area was previously riddled with drawing pin holes........quite how they forced drawing pins into oak I don't quite know.......the organist must have had terribly strong thumbs! The new oak is darkening and will eventually blem in perfectly.
