20 Stop Harrisons

[Phoneuma]

Following on from a number of very informative and interesting emails from a forum member it seems that there are a number of very versatile and smallish Arthur Harrison instruments of real worth and note which are not more widely known.

 

This organ, in Skipton, is a real survivor and would serve as an excellent example to get the ball rolling. It’s technically 19 real stops as the usual borrowings for the pedal are there, including the downward extension for the 16’ pedal reed. The Solo was prepared for only.

 

I’ll leave it to those who have played it to sing its praises, suffice it to say that I have the joy of unlimited access without too many duties (that sounds like a good deal I hear you say). Robert Marsh is the organist there and he has built-up a very good bank holiday series of recitals each year. I might as well plug the forthcoming Easter Monday one at 11.00 am for good measure for any of you who might be up in the t’north. ( I fill in when he has other engagements or examining tours).

 

http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=N05080

 

[Colin Pykett]

St John's, Weymouth:

 

http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=N10008

 

One of those instruments which somehow seem comfortable and inviting and with much to explore tonally even for a small organ. Somehow very refined, with almost a Rolls-Royce feel. This always made it difficult to leave and switch off the blower. The last time I was there it was a wedding at which I played at the invitation of the family. It coped with 'the Widor' quite well even wihout a pedal reed, and some in the bridal party were visibly moved by it - I suspect this was the instrument rather than my playing.

 

I haven't played there for some while now so cannot speak for the organ as it might be today, though it had been very well cared for when I last played it. It confirmed my opinion that Harrisons, or at least some of them, are certainly different, in a positive sense, to what one generally encounters.

 

CEP

[Contrabombarde]

I always thought this was a particularly lovely example:

http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=N03578 (1912, St John's Keswick) though it's a small two manual rebuild of a much larger three manual Gern (!) built just 20 years earlier.

 

Here is a slightly larger instrument, very effective and deserves to be far better known. It's Grade 2* listed (3 manual 32 stops, King's Heath Methodist Church, Birmingham)

http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=K00805

 

Across the road from the King's Heath organ is a smaller 3 manual Binns in the Baptist Church, though I haven't seen or heard it. On paper it looks very similar to the Gern that Harrisons worked on in Keswick.

[A Caskie]

The St John's Keswick organ is indeed lovely, but it isn't a patch on the glorious 1906 II/18 H&H in Whitehaven URC, 30 miles away on the Cumbrian west coast. Not being in such a tourist spot it isn't so widely known, but it's the finest small Romantic organ I've ever played. Every stop on it is voiced to perfection, and playing it feels like driving a vintage Bentley. Specification was designed by both Lt Col Dixon and Alfred Hollins - see spec and pics at http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=N03535.

[Christopher Allsop]

This one's lovely too: http://www.bhamorgan.org.uk/organs/042.htm

 

1915 II/17 in the Friends Meeting House, Bournville, Birmingham.

[Rowland Wateridge]

Here’s another, originally 1927 with 16 speaking stops, and equally of Rolls Royce and Bentley calibre in a superb acoustic: St Alban, Hindhead, Surrey.

Compare photographs with St John’s Weymouth: almost twins, and indeed the consoles of all the other organs above. It’s many years since I played St Alban’s, courtesy of the late Brian Hunter, then organist, former President of the Surrey Organists’ Association and Secretary and Honorary Solicitor to the Organists’ Benevolent League.

https://www.npor.org.uk/survey/N13756

One of the advantages of this Board is discovering an old thread like this one, albeit several years after the preceding final entry. 

[peter ellis]

On 26/03/2015 at 22:00, Contrabombarde said:

I always thought this was a particularly lovely example:

http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=N03578 (1912, St John's Keswick) though it's a small two manual rebuild of a much larger three manual Gern (!) built just 20 years earlier.

 

Here is a slightly larger instrument, very effective and deserves to be far better known. It's Grade 2* listed (3 manual 32 stops, King's Heath Methodist Church, Birmingham)

http://www.npor.org.uk/NPORView.html?RI=K00805

 

Across the road from the King's Heath organ is a smaller 3 manual Binns in the Baptist Church, though I haven't seen or heard it. On paper it looks very similar to the Gern that Harrisons worked on in Keswick.

Hi Contrabombarde - I think you inadvertently posted the link to the Kings Heath baptist spec - here is the Methodist NPOR | G00576

I posted on X the other day that I lived in Birmingham for 4 years and never went inside St. Paul's in the Jewellery Quarter. I now realise that even though I was organist at All Saints, Kings Heath for 3 years I never stepped inside the Methodist or Baptist churches. Put it down to the wasteful arrogance of youth. 

[Colin Pykett]

It seems to me that a successful feature of Harrison organs of this vintage concerns their mixture compositions.  The starting composition in the bass often continues where the other chorus work left off.  For example, if there is nothing above 4' pitch elsewhere, then the mixture begins either with a 12th rank or perhaps a 15th, but not higher.  You can see this in the two mixtures at St John's Weymouth which I mentioned above:

https://www.npor.org.uk/survey/N10008

So there isn't a yawning gap which would open up if the mixture was of higher pitch, which would tend to make the chorus sound thin and with an over-strident mixture which might well be too loud and screamy.  Although this might seem obvious, it surprises me how many organs have been (and still are) built where this doesn't happen.  Far from being conservative and unexciting, I would suggest that it contributes to the refined blend which the better builders achieve.

[Rowland Wateridge]

Pedantic, possibly, but I can’t believe that the Weymouth organ has plastic drawstop knobs.  They surely must be ivory.  As I said earlier, the family likeness of these early Harrison consoles is unmistakable.  

In recent years there has been discussion that H&H have lost (mislaid?) the standard dimensions of their traditional consoles which Vox Humana and PCND 5584, among others, declared to be the most comfortable.  Currently one can see on the H&H website the naked frame carcass of the Winchester console at Durham, so it should be an easy matter to take accurate measurements: possibly that has been done.

[bam]

The 2005 restoration at St Helen's, Abingdon to close to the 1927 25 stop original is very successful, but I was disappointed by the Swell mixture.  It has been restored to its 1927 composition of 15,19,22, breaking back a full octave at middle C to 8,12,15 so losing its brilliance just where it's needed.  I don't think this is a typical period H&H composition so perhaps it was done to the wishes of the organist at the time. 

https://www.npor.org.uk/survey/E01126

[Rowland Wateridge]

The history of this organ isn’t particularly easy to follow.  For the 1927 (1928?) specification see:

https://www.npor.org.uk/survey/N09909

The organ has a magnificent case variously stated to be by Abraham Jordan 1726 (A00469), or unnamed 1780 (N09909), and virtually ignored in the latest survey (E01126) - just “en fenêtre”!  

There’s a photograph on E01126.  Can it possibly be right, as stated there, that as late as 2005 H&H lowered the case by 250 mm?

Edit

I should have checked H&H’s website!  This explains everything:

https://www.harrisonorgans.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Abingdon-2021.pdf