Beverley St Mary

[PaulH]

Apologies if this is old news but having searched, I can't find any reference to this on here.

A recent Youtube rabbit hole trip ended up with an unexpected visit to Viscount Organs page and the sad news that St Mary's 4-manual F&A/Lewis organ is no longer in use and a Viscount Regent 361 was permanently installed in February. The full story is on the Viscount website but apparently the pipe organ electrics failed completely - H&H estimated a £1.5M rebuild cost but, and I quote, "little of the pipework merited reuse. This was an analysis with which the two diocesan organ advisors concurred".

The church is in the middle of a £4M restoration (including £2M on the roof above the organ case) so I imagine this is simply a question of unstretchable resources. Whatever the reason, it's sad news. The organ always struggled a bit to cope with congregation towards the back of the nave but still... it had some fine sounds.