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Four Centuries of
Organ Music
[Extract from All Saints Writtle by
Stuart Platt, pub 1992]
 The
second arch of the North chancel aisle contains a modern pipe organ.
There is evidence that a small organ would have been sited on the great
rood screen formerly dividing nave from chancel and which would have
been dismantled at the Reformation. The organ was still mentioned in an
inventory of 1604, but whatever replaced it was still felt to be
inadequate so that in 1887, a two manual instrument with 15 stops, by an
organ builder called Monk, was installed at a cost of £325.
It was second-hand when purchased, and although it
was renovated in 1927, after another 40 years' use it was in poor
mechanical order. Its tonal qualities had also been subject to criticism
for some time; on March 4th 1974, the hoses, which successfully subdued
the flames also effectively, extinguished this organ.
The replacement organ by Bishop, of Ipswich, was a
compromise between what was really needed in a large parish church with
a good musical tradition and the limited funds available from the
insurance claim. It was again a 2-manual organ but with 18 stops; it was
considered by those who used it to be inadequate. Although satisfactory
in the middle ranges, it had insufficient loud or soft stops, no open
diapaison or couple on the swell and as the cost of repairs would have
been astronomic an alternative instrument was needed. For a trial period
after the disastrous 1991 fire when the organ was ruined by water damage
an Italian digital computerised organ by General Electro Music was used.
With 3 manuals, 52 stops, and voices reproduced from some of the
country's finest organs, it had a tonal range and power exceeding
anything that has ever before been installed in our church.
Traditionalists were shocked, but no one listening to the BBC broadcasts
from Writtle in June 1992 would have suspected that the organ
accompanying the singing was not a conventional pipe organ.
The search continued for a pipe organ and one was
eventually located. This instrument, rebuilt by George Johnson of
Bristol in 1886 from an earlier organ of about 1850, came from Shepton
Mallet Methodist Church, and was restored and installed by Percy Daniel
and Company of Clevedon in 1994. It has two manuals with 18 speaking
stops and 3 couplers, using mechanical action. A balanced swell pedal,
giving variable adjustment on the swell, enables the achievement of an
infinitely gradual crescendo; the pedals have electro-pneumatic action.
Another modification made before installation in Writtle was the
introduction of a swell mixture operation of a special stop enabling a
blended 3 rank mixture of notes to be sounded from any one stop - this
important refinement was given by the Anelli family in memory of Jack
and Marjorie Cuss. This organ gives the scope and volume that it's two
predecessors were unable to deliver, and has the quality that enables it
to be used for organ recitals. Housed in an elegant classical case of
mahogany and stained pine, with gilded pipes, it is aesthetically as
well as musically pleasing, and a fitting addition to this fine church
building.
The cost of the organ from Shepton Mallet,
dismantling it, carrying out a complete overhaul, making the necessary
improvements, transporting to our Church, dismantling of the old organ
and installation of the new organ, amounted to the sum of £22,265.
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