St Stephen’s Organ

St Stephen’s is proud of it’s musical traditions and uses a pipe organ to accompany all services. It was last rebuilt by F. H. Brownes and Sons in 1964 with Allan Wicks, then Organist and Master of the Choristers at Canterbury Cathedral as advisor.

The organ has served the church well in a period that has seen increased demands made upon it in the range or music and accompaniment of the choir that it is called upon to realise. Like all things mechanical, time causes wear and tear and consequently in 2007 several organ builders were approached to look at the instrument and see how it could be improved. As a result of this process, Brownes were asked to draw up detailed plans to support their proposals, but plans are currently on hold while we take a more careful look at how we use the church building for worship now, and in years to come.

St Stephen’s Church, Canterbury: Current Specification

F. H. Brownes and Son, 1964

Balanced Swell Pedal.
4 divisional thumb pistons to Great and Swell.
Swell to Great and Great to Pedal reversable thumb piston.
Great to Pedal reversable toe piston.
Radiating and concave pedal board.

Casework divided each side of north window in north transept.

Previous instruments

The first organ was purchased for the parish by the Reverend John White, sometime in the middle of the nineteenth century – the first record of a salary being paid to an organist is in 1843, when Mr John Smith was paid £5 for playing the organ.  The details of this instrument are unclear, most likely a single manual instrument built, according to the National Pipe Organ Register (www.npor.org.uk), by James Eagles, an organ builder based in London between c. 1840 and 1864.  Around 1879 this organ was either replaced or rebuilt by J.W. Walker, also based in London.  At this time the organist’s salary was increased to £20 a year (paid quarterly at Easter, Lady Day, Michaelmas and Christmas) and 16/- a year paid to the organ blower.

The specification of the Walker organ in the south transept at the beginning of the twentieth century was as follows:

In 1902, Brownes tended a quote to rebuild and enlarge the organ with the following specification:

Two combination pedals to Great
Two combination pedals to Swell
Tubular pneumatic action

This was to be built using the existing pipework with new where necessary, and using the exiting casework, again adapted where necessary. The cost of the quote was Three hundred and fifty pounds. There was also a second scheme proposed to have the organ placed ‘on pillars at the west end’ (so even over a hundred years ago there was dissatisfaction with the placing of the organ in the transepts and the resulting balance in the nave!) with the addition of thumb pistons in place of combination pedals. The cost of this second scheme was Four hundred and twenty-five pounds.

Sadly it seems that both of these schemes were beyond the means of the congregation of St Stephen’s at that time, and a much reduced instrument was ordered for two-hundred pounds: “an organ of two manuals and pedal, containing 13 sounding stops, 4 couplers, 4 comp. ped, in Pine Case…” (Brownes Ledger, page 611). An additional three pounds was paid for “fitting sheet zinc to wall [as a] protection against damp” (ibid.) and two pounds for a pitch pine seat.

The resulting instrument’s specification was as follows:

Two combination pedals to Great
Two combination pedals to Swell
Tubular pneumatic action

The next rebuild in 1964, again by Brownes, brings us to the instrument that we currently have and that is detailed at the top of this page.

The Future…

So what for the future? It’s perhaps a shame that in the 1903 rebuild the organ lost a certain amount of its timbre, particularly with the loss of the Great fifteenth and Swell Cornopean, and then the loss of the Swell Voix Celeste in the 1964 rebuild – three stops that I would like to see returned to the organ, along with a twelfth and small scale mixture on the Great to complete the Diapason chorus. The Pedal department is lacking in individual tone, being currently based on a single rank of wooden Bourdon pipes, so a more independent organ division needs to be created, through discrete borrowing from other departments as well as an additional pedal rank.