Churches closing in Eastbourne

[davidh]

The Eastbourne Herald announced today: "Four churches in Eastbourne are to merge to form one church leaving three of the empty buildings up for development. Central Methodist Church in Pevensey Road, St Andrew’s United Reformed Church in Cornfield Lane, Greenfield Methodist Church in Green Street and Upperton Road United Reformed Church in Upperton Road will join together and become Emmanuel Church. That church will be on the site of the Upperton Road church, on the junction of Upperton Road with and will involve a complete redevelopment."

Two of the churches have substantial organs:

The Central Methodist has a IIIP 36 built by Morgan and Smith, undated.

St Andrews in Cornfield Lane (Blackwater Road) has a IIIP 52 built by Hunter, Morgan and Smith, J H Males and Hill, Norman and Beard. It is probably a much better instrument than it sounds, as it is badly sited in a church with poor acoustics.

There is no news about the likely fate of these organs. Ideally the best of them will go to the new church, which I think will be a complete rebuild, and could sound much better there. However, I have no idea whether the substantial amount of money would be available for resiting, and even whether a modern church would think that a real pipe organ is a good thing.

Does anyone know any more about this?

[Malcolm Kemp]

Paul Collins, the director of music at St Saviour's, is the best person to tell you about the Hunter in St Andrew's URC. I don't think he's on this forum but you can contact him via St Saviour's.

[davidh]

I have heard that St Andrews is now closed and the locks have been changed at the insistence of the insurers. The organ won't be included in the rebuild, so may go as a whole to an English or continental site, or may be broken up.