I have some good news for you Barry. We have at last got substantial enough sums to restore this fine instrument. I'm a Meynell and descendant of the Founder, Emily Meynell Ingram) and was born and brought up at Hoar Cross, but left there in my early twenties to pursue a different lifestyle. I am the last person alive now who used to play this organ regularly for services until the '70's when the bellows collapsed. I wrote a history of it many years ago but that has now been lost.
The Church is one of the greatest achievments of the great Victorian architect, G.F. Bodley. You can see the fine case if you go to http://www.holyangels.co.uk/index.html under the photos (the Church is hardly tiny but whether it served as a model for the much later Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, I wouldn't know, though I see the resemblance you mean). The case was actually by Farmer & Brindley but it is understood that whilst Bodley DID design a case for the Church this was not it but he undoubtedly influenced its design. It did indeed come from Bangor, and contained a decent proportion of Samuel Green pipework. But it was only intended as a Chancel Organ, but being there became, ipso facto, the main isnstrument.
It's a 3 manual, tracker action obviously, and has Bishop writeen all over it. I now play a 2 manual Bishop near where I live now, near Banbury, and felt immediately at home as soon I saw it and played it.
Some 40 years ago – it must’ve been in the early ‘60’s - as the Founding Secretary of the Eton College Organ Society, I arranged a visit by the Society to come and see round the Mander Works. Noel Mander conducted us on this tour and I was fired up with his description of how to voice and – above all - his passion. The fact that he was as enthusiastic to a bunch of uncouth 15-17 yrs old boys as I imagine he would be to a parcel of Bishops, lives on in my memory. We were transfixed too by the craftmanship we saw – we talked of little else for days (apart from the other things that 15-17 yr old boys talk about).
A few years later, I asked him to come up and look at the Hoar Cross Church Organ – not particularly remarkable maybe except for the Greene pipework and the wonderful case. He crawled all round it with a torch and thought he could identify Greene’s work – he knew what it looked like - but couldn’t be certain until some at least was removed.
He followed this up with a suggested specification and an approximate Estimate (sadly lost now – a different story). We then at the Hoar Cross end started a fund to raise the money. Our main step forward was when we sold a painting collected by my ancestor, Emily Meynell Ingram. For those days it was a huge some of money and the then Bishop ‘seized’ it (the money) and said we could make do with a piano – the starving of Africa deserved it more. So the organ has lain silent – the bellows collapsed permanently a couple of years later (temperature fluctuation, probably) - since then, and nobody has done anything for obvious reasons.
After the death of my brother, I was recently appointed a Trustee of the Meynell Church Trust and we have now established that the Church BELONGS to the Trustees and so – as OWNERS - we now know we're in a stronger position.
Watch this space!
Freddie Meynell