On Saturday 5 October 2024 we launched the Appeal to save the Hill Pipe Organ, installed in 1906. We were delighted that so many parishioners turned out, but also local elected officials, members of the wider community, and many journalists from local newspapers and publications, from the BBC and ITV Border, all of which helped to get the word out there and drum up support.  

Mike Town, the Organ Advisor for Carlisle Anglican Diocese has spent much of his life giving advice to churches with problematic pipe organs across the north of the country and it seemed that he would be a very good person to get to place the significance of our organ into a wider context.

In his talk, Mike spoke of how the organ in Our Lady & St Michael’s church is a particularly fine example of one built by Dr Arthur Hill in 1906. In his work log, the organ is marked down as ‘Job 2334’. The organ was paid for with the help of a Carnegie grant and from public donations; Fr Clement Standish was particularly able to call upon the generosity of some of his Protestant friends in the town. The organ was built, and, as far as we know, it has been going ever since with one significant clean and renovation in 1953 by Hill, Norman & Beard. Significantly any works have almost left the original design unaltered and ensured that the organ remains in its pristine state, and for this reason it carries an Historic Organ Certificate (2016) – Grade II* - making it very special indeed.

Arthur Hill was the grandson of the founder of the firm, William Hill, who built many of the finest organs across Britain and elsewhere in the Nineteenth Century: for example, that in Westminster Cathedral, and also the largest pipe organ in the world in Sydney Town Hall. Closer to home, Hill had a local office in Carlisle and so his expertise was brought to this part of the world. Mike spoke of how he is the organist in Patterdale and its organ is a William Hill of 1866 and recently renovated. Recently a set of three CDs have been produced entitled, ‘The Genius of Hill & Son’, celebrating many of the finest of three generations of Hill organs between 1832 and 1915. The first two tracks were recorded on the 1843 organ in the Catholic Church of Our Lady & St. Wilfred in Warwick Bridge, between Carlisle and Brampton.

How does the pipe organ work here in Our Lady & St Michael’s church. A pipe organ consists of a blower (like a large hair-dryer without a heater) blowing air into a large reservoir (set of bellows), which is then ducted into the main sections of the organ: in this case, the lower keyboard (known as the Great Manual), the upper keyboard (known as the Swell) and the Pedal. Each section has one or more “stops” – a row of pipes of similar shape but different sizes.

There are 3 types of organ actions connecting the keys and pedals to the pipes: mechanical (also known as ‘tracker’), electric and pneumatic. Pneumatic actions became popular in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries and are fine until the leatherwork begins to deteriorate, typically after 70 years, or so. Since the last renovation in 1953, this in Our Lady & St Michael’s church is now in serious need  of extensive re-leathering as well as cleaning and the quotations for doing this work, from three of the top-rate UK organ builders, is around £200K. Part of the cost is the top grade sheep’s leather, another is the cost of thousands of hours of labour to dismantle the instrument, take most of it to an organ works, then return all the parts and re-assemble it.

Some may say, why go to the bother. Why not replace it with an electronic organ? Problem 1: the pipe organ would need to be expensively rebuilt before it could be moved to another church or hall. Problem 2: electronics typically last 14 or 15 years [industry standard], so would need several replacements over the course of 70 or 100 years as the technology changes fast, and so this is hardly a saving. Problem 3. Electronic organs sound electronic. There is none of the wind rushing through the pipes.

And so, it falls upon us to save this magnificent machine for the church and for the wider community. On the day it was a delight to welcome young families to the launch of the appeal and to allow them to experience first hand the beauty of the instrument. It was an encouraging thought to reflect that the efforts that we put into raising the requisite sums and repairing the organ will bear fruit in these children’s lives and their children’s lives, and indeed their children’s lives. This is a project which has far reaching resonance, and one which we hope as many people as possible will become part of.

If you would like to make a donation of any amount and be part of the story, please contact the parish office. For those who would like to ‘sponsor a pipe’, we are suggesting that a donation of £200 or more would enable an inscription to be added in special memorial book.