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About the Church Organ

The organ is currently undergoing a major refurbishment, including tonal changes with the addition of new pedal stops and a 2ft and Clarinet on the Great manual. The cost will be around £45,000 and organ pipes can be sponsored. When finished the organ will have just over 1400 pipes.

For photographs of the rebuilding of the organ please follow this link

The organ was built in 1927 at a cost of £1100 by the firm of J. G. Haskins & Co of Brigstocke Road, St. Paul’s, in Bristol. There was actually no such person as J. G. Haskins for this was a pseudonym. Two brothers ran the firm - Arthur Edwin Keyes and William Anthony Keyes, sons of Anthony Wyatt Keyes, also an organ builder in Bristol. The Keyes brothers worked for W. G. Vowles of Bristol (builder of an organ for Bristol Cathedral in 1861) and Arthur Edwin Keyes was their senior designer. In 1905 the firm of Vowles went into decline and needed to lay off men including William Anthony Keyes. Arthur Edwin decided to resign and the Keyes brothers set up independently taking on some of the other men laid off. They built about one organ a year, many in private houses as well as in chapels and churches. For reasons of business ethics they decided to use the pseudonym "Haskins". The firm continued until 1940 when their Bristol factory burnt down in a bombing raid. The Haskins company built around 20 new instruments between 1910 and 1930, mostly in Bristol, Somerset, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire. Another instrument very similar in specification to ours was also built for St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Swindon, demolished in the 1960s. The quality and voicing of the strings and flutes in Wroughton are exceptional, far superior to Haskins’ other work suggesting that the present instrument probably contains pipe work from elsewhere. The organ was dedicated on Thursday May 12th 1927 by Dr. R. T. Talbot (Archdeacon of Swindon) with Mr. John J. Gale (organist at St. Mark’s Swindon and formerly at Wroughton) as organist. The pieces performed by Mr. Gale during the service, which was both a service of blessing and thanksgiving and also an organ recital, included Fugue in D by J. S. Bach, Marche funèbre et chant séraphique by Alexandre Guilmant, Songs in the Night by Walter Spinney, April Showers by Eugène Favet and Grand Offertoire in D by Edouard Batiste. The North Wilts Herald announced the following week that “the organ is claimed to be the finest in the neighbourhood of Swindon”.

Previous Organs

Prior to the major rebuilding of the church in Victorian times there had been a West Gallery in the church and music was provided by “West Gallery Musicians”. In 1847 the (first known) organ in the church was vandalised and destroyed

and rumours were rife that the displaced West Gallery musicians were responsible for this. Around 1850 a small instrument (one manual, without pedals) by J. Smith of Bristol was situated on the north wall in the niche were a former external door was blocked up and this was probably a replacement for the vandalised instrument. There is a newspaper article in 1927 implying that this instrument, replaced in 1875, was later used in Winterbourne Bassett church.

The replacement organ installed in September 1875 was a second-hand instrument of 2 manuals and pedals newly sited in the Chancel. The builder of this instrument is unknown, but around the time of World War I it was under the care of Gray & Davison, the large London firm who had a branch in Oxford. For the sum of 35 Pounds and 2 Shillings, G&D renewed part of the pedal mechanism and changed a Cornopean stop for a Gamba in 1914. It is not known what became of this organ, but pipes from it are unlikely to have been re-used in the present organ for the one organ was replaced by the other in the amazingly short time of two weeks.

We are grateful to Major Anthony Horne, grandson of Arthur Edwin Keyes, the builder of our organ, for information about the firm of Haskins.

Organ Specification

The organ has two manuals and pedals and had tubular pneumatic action throughout. The case, in Austrian oak, was designed by W. A. Masters, LICRBA.

Swell Organ (58 notes, C to a 3 enclosed, balanced swell pedal)

1. Oboe 8ft
2. Cornopean 8ft
3. Fifteenth 2ft (added 1960, formerly Viol d'Orchestre 8ft)
4. Gemshorn 4ft
5. Salicional 8ft
6. Vox Celeste 8ft
7. Violin Diapason 8ft
8. Open Diapason 8ft
9. Lieblich Gedackt 8ft
10. Double Diapason 16ft
Tremulant
Great Organ (58 notes, C to a 3 not enclosed, front display pipes speak, the side pipes are dummies)
11. Trumpet 8ft
12. Mixture II- III (added 1960, formerly Gamba 8ft)
13. Principal 4ft
14. Harmonic Flute 4ft
15. Clarabella 8ft
16. Dulciana 8ft
17. Open Diapason Medium 8ft
18. Open Diapason I 8ft
Pedal Organ (30 notes, C to f 1 not enclosed)
19. Bass Flute 8ft (extension of 20.)
20. Bourdon 16ft
21. Open Diapason 16ft
 
Swell to Great
Swell to Pedal
Swell Octave
Swell Suboctave
Great to Pedal
3 composition pedals each to Great and Swell

Blowing: Electric (added 1949, shortly after electricity arrived in the church)