Norwell St Laurence

Organ

The organ pipes
located above
the tower arch		 The organ console
in the chancel

The present organ was installed and dedicated in June 1974 replacing an existing organ. The console is on the south side of the chancel and the pipes above the tower arch on the west wall of the nave.

The organ was designed and built around 1900 by Cousans of Lincoln. For more than half a century it was in Bardney Methodist Church. It was obtained from Bardney by Cousans and then bought from them in 1973 by Evelyn Marston, churchwarden of Norwell, for £3,800, as a memorial to his sister, Hilda, who was at one time organist in Norwell.

It is a two-manual pipe organ with 9 speaking stops, subsequently enlarged by the addition of 3 stops. In 1973 it was restored and electrified by Cousans and three new stops were added.

Specification

Pedal organ
  1. Sub Bass 16ft                                                 
  I Great to pedal
  II Swell to pedal
         

Great organ
  2. Open diapason 8ft  
  3. Clarabella 8ft  
  4. Salicional 8ft  
  5. Principal 4ft  
  6. Fifteenth 2ft  
  III Swell to great
  IV Swell to great octave
         

Swell organ
  7. Violin diapason 8ft  
  8. Gamba 8ft  
  9. Lieblich Gedackt   8ft  
  10. Gemshorn 4ft  
  11. Block Flute 2ft  
  12. Trumpet 8ft  
  V Swell octave
  VI Tremulant
         

Accessories
  3 Thumb pistons to Great organ
3 Thumb pistons to swell organ
1 reversible thumb piston (swell to great)
1 reversible thumb piston (great to pedal)
3 Toe pistons duplicating great thumb pistons
2 reversible pistons (swell to great and great to pedal)
Balanced swell pedal
   

Action
  Electro-pneumatic throughout
The organist in
1974 (with the vicar
& Mr E Marston)

Dedication

This took place on 18 June 1974. The organ was dedicated by the Bishop of Sherwood, the Right Revd KG Thompson assisted by the Archdeacon of Newark, the Ven BW Woodhams. The vicar was the Revd Canon HA Kirton. At the service the organ was played by Kenneth Beard, Rector Chori and Organist of Southwell Minster.

Previous organ

Showing the chancel
 in c.1930, with the
previous organ

In 1906 the Ecclesiastical Commissioners were asked for permission to put an organ in the chancel, or alternatively at the east end of the south aisle. Permission was not granted on the grounds that it would obscure the view of the altar. Provisional permission for it to be put in the chancel was finally given in 1907.

In 1973 one of the reasons given for removing the existing organ was its size.

‘Its appearance in the chancel, where it blocks the view of the altar, regularly shocks visitors’, also ‘... it is little exaggeration to say that the existing organ takes up about a third of the width [of the chancel]’.

This organ was removed at the end of 1973.