All Day Visit to Organs in the Bishops Stortford Area

On the 19th September members met at 10am at St Mary’s, Stanstead Mountfitchet, for an all day visit to the Bishops Stortford area. St Mary’s is one of two churches in the town but is sadly redundant and owned and cared for by the Churches Conservation Trust. Linda, who welcomed us with refreshments, is very active in raising money to help maintain the church fabric and organ. This includes ‘Champing’ where you can pay to stay in the church all night with beds etc laid on. The Hill organ was in good condition thanks to Andrew Stevens and members enjoyed playing a variety of music including Parry, Lefebre-Wely, Oldroyd and Rheinberger. Two members played a duet by Samuel Wesley and the fine trumpet stop was commented on.

We then travelled to St Mary’s, Birchanger, a much smaller church where members were able to play the most unusual and rare Gern organ. The whole 3 manual pipework in held within a louvred case and then the Swell is in another case withing the main one-a swell within a swell. There were two kick-swell pedals close together. There was plenty of free playing, members choosing to experiment with the sounds available, but it was atmospheric enough to make Vierne effective.

15 of us sat down to an excellent lunch at The Three Willows in Birchanger, in a marquee to ourselves. This all-day event was thrown open to Beds & Herts OA and Enfield and District OA, which swelled the numbers and made for a jolly day.

After lunch we visited St Michael’s Bishops Stortford where members were welcomed by the Director of Music, Nathan, and enjoyed playing the Kirkland/Walker organ, beautifully restored by Manders. There was also a lovely little one manual 3 stop positive organ by Peter Collins. Members played music by, amongst others, Whitlock, Bach, EJ Moeran and Satie while Emma played from Ad Wammes’ Tryptich on the Collins. It was a thoroughly successful day organised by Andrew Stevens and Andrew deserved the thanks from all present for his hard work making the morning instruments playable. It is hoped to organise more joint events in the near future.