Weem: Weem Parish Church
J W Walker & Sons, 1875 — organ surveyed August 2024 [page updated July 2025]
On the face of it, this little mechanical organ by J.W. Walker, probably the first to be completed in Scotland by the firm, looks quite straightforward: a post-and-rail case design of pitch pine with minimal ornamentation, two manuals and pedals, 11 or 12 stops, mechanical action. The pipe facade is gilded, and was gilded originally, although comparison of the pipes as they are now with old photographs of the organ in the church vestry, and inspection of the rear of the facade pipes, indicates the gilding may have been renewed in recent years.
There are some unusual features in this organ – like the size and compass of the Swell soundboard – which raise some questions which are not easy to answer almost 150 years after the organ was built.
LAYOUT + KEY ACTION
The layout appears conventional with the Great soundboard lying at impost level. Behind it is a walkboard where it would be expected. The Swell soundboard is a couple of feet higher than that of the Great, behind the walkboard, from which there is adequate access to both departments.
The Pedal Bourdon is located both at the rear of the Swell box and on the treble (right hand) side, very tightly crammed into the limited space of the chamber. The main wind reservoir is located underneath the Swell soundboard and the central walkboard.
The mechanical key action comprises all the usual ingredients: trackers (comprising flat sticks in this organ), wires, felts, buttons, backfalls, squares, stickers, and so on.
The Great action, located behind the console music desk, is conveyed largely by splayed backfalls to the appropriate trackers under the (mostly) chromatic chest, whose pipes run from left to right (bass to treble). There is a small rollerboard with ten rollers to transmit the action of the alternate lower notes whose pipes are located on the far right hand (treble) side of the Great chest.
The Swell action runs under the Great chest and transferred upwards from squares to a full scale rollerboard under the Swell box. As the Swell pipes are laid out as a pyramid, having a full rollerboard is of course essential.
Part of the Pedal (Bourdon) action runs through under the reservoir to the rear of the organ where it is transmitted to a rollerboard to convey the movement to the Bourdon pipes above.
There are further mechanisms to convey the pedal action to the Bourdon pipes at the treble side of the Swell box. In addition to the Bourdon trackers, there are 12 trackers derived from the Swell action to activate the 12 Bourdon notes operated as Swell Stop’d Diapason notes C to B.
At some point, probably in the late 1950s, the original 29 note pedalboard was replaced by a radiating, concave pedalboard and an extra note added for the top f’. It is impossible to reach the top pipes, but one of the smallest appears to have a different style of stopper from the rest.
The manual to pedal coupler action is located behind the pedalboard on the left hand side; this is impossible to see properly as a recent light fitting impedes the removal of the wooden panel which protects it. However a photograph taken from the treble end of the pedalboard makes things clearer. This coupler action must have been completely revamped when the Swell to Pedal was added.
Right: Photograph taken from treble end of pedal board which shows the re-modelled manual to pedal coupler action.
COUPLER ACTION + STOP ACTION
The Swell to Great coupler mechanism is located behind the music desk. During practice by Sowne’s three organists, this mechanism worked slightly loose, due to a trundle pin not fully inserted. Our own efforts to re-insert it were not entirely successful, but with proper tools this could be rectified by the organ tuners.
The stop action is fully mechanical and complicated only by the fact that the sliders for both manuals are located on opposite sides of the chests from their respective stop handles. Thus the Great stops are on the right hand jamb on the console while their sliders function from the left hand side of the soundboard. Swell stops are on the left jamb of the console, but their sliders operate from the right hand side of the Swell box. Thus long Great trundles run under the Great soundboards and long Swell trundles run under the Swell soundboard.
Left: Swell stop trundles traversing the organ under some Rushworth copex for winding the Swell.
CONSOLE + WINDING + SOUNDBOARDS
The console is comfortable to use. Both manuals run from C to g”’, but the Swell stops run only from c to g”’. The lowest octave of the Swell (C to B) only operates on the Stop’d Diapason stop, whose 12 pipes are shared with the Pedal Bourdon. These pipes sound slightly different when used by each of the two stops, suggesting perhaps that they have double pallets, one pallet for manual use and one for Pedal use. The pedalboard originally was specified as running from C to e’ (29 notes), but, as mentioned above, was replaced sometime in the 20th century by a concave and radiating pedalboard running from C to f’. A lever Swell was replaced by a balanced pedal too. A Swell to Pedal mechanism was also added, at first operated only by a pedal. A small stop was installed in the middle of the left jamb at some stage so that this function could be activated by the player’s hand. The Swell to Pedal pedal does not now appear to operate. A Tremulant mechanism and stop were also added in the 20th
century, the mechanism making access to the organ from the rear quite difficult. The stop handle is isolated on the left hand side of the left jamb on the console. Most of the original brass candlesticks survive but the brass tell-tale on the right jamb of the console has disappeared within the last twelve years. There are two combination pedals,
for the Great stops only. A brass plaque installed above the console reads “J.W. Walker & Sons, London 1875”; its design is different from all the numerous designs of plaques illustrated in Nicholas Plumley’s book on the Walker company. There is also a plaque in memory of Sir Robert Menzies whose family based at nearby Weem Castle endowed this church and so much else in the Aberfeldy area.
The wind for the organ is supplied by an electric motor at the rear of the instrument and fed into a large double-rise reservoir located beneath the Swell soundboard and walkboard. The original feeders underneath the reservoir and hand pump survive but for some reason the mechanism has been jammed shut to prevent its use at the moment. The wind trunk leading from the reservoir to the Swell soundboard is no longer original but is made of copex, presumably installed in 1994. The trunk leading to the Bourdon chest is original. Bellows weights have the initials JWW carved on them – just about discernible in the photograph!
Right: bellows weights and some of the Bourdon trackers at the foot.
Both Great and Swell soundboards have been originally made with space generous enough to accommodate a slightly larger stop list than that installed.
The Great soundboard, with provision for 56 notes (C to g”’) has room for an extra stop at the front of the organ behind the facade. A 16′ bourdon might have been added, but only a small part of this area is occupied – by a few of the conveyances leading to the facade pipes. The upperboard at the rear of the chest, originally prepared for, saw a gamba installed twenty years after the original installation of the organ. The gamba occupies a position where a reed might have been expected, and four notes have had to be positioned off the chest on clamps for reasons of space. For the most part the Great stops run chromatically from bass to treble (left to right), with only a maximum of ten bass pipes accommodated at the treble end of the chest.
The Swell soundboard rather surprisingly appears to have been constructed with provision for only 42 notes (rather than 44, as might be expected for the c to g”’ compass which it serves). While there are 44 pulldowns under the chest, it’s clear the soundboard was belatedly adapted for two extra notes. Four extra pipes have had to be placed outside the swell box (on both sides) and another two squeezed in beside treble pipes within the box on both sides. With pipes arranged in pyramid shape, a similarly shaped box might have been expected, but in fact
the box is a full cube in outline, with conventional horizontal shutters operated by a more than usually complicated array of trundles. The Swell Piccolo was placed at the rear of the box, where it must be near impossible to tune, and it occupies only a fraction of the space available there. As the correspondence which Steven McIntyre has researched indicates, a manual 16 foot stop may have originally been envisaged for this position.
GREAT PIPEWORK
There are six stops operating on the Great, but in effect, there are only five ranks of pipes. From the front to the rear of the chest, the stops are Open Diapason 8, Principal 4, Dulciana 8, Stop’d Diapason and Wald Flute 8, and Gamba 8 (1896).
The Open Diapason 8‘ has 37 plain metal pipes running chromatically from bass to treble, plus only two pipes located at the treble end of the chest. The remaining 17 pipes form the front facade of the organ. All the pipes on the chest have had tuning slides added The Principal 4’ has 44 plain metal pipes running chromatically from bass to treble, plus eight larger pipes located on the treble end of the chest. The remaining four bass pipes are located on the sides of the facade, two on each side. Only the middle c pipe of this rank remains cone-tuned.
The Dulciana 8′ has 40 plain metal pipes running from bass to treble, plus four larger bass pipes at the treble end of the chest. The stop runs from c to g”’ only. The bottom octave is not grooved into any other stop and thus no sounds are made by playing the keys from C to B with only the Dulciana stop drawn. There are tuning slides throughout; those of the top octave pipes look slightly older than the remainder.
The Stop’d Diapason Bass and Wald Flute Treble 8′ comprise three different kinds of pipe. The lowest 14 pipes, most operated as the Stop’d Diapason Bass have stopped wooden pipes with finely bevelled mushroom stoppers. The lowest 10 notes of the Wald Flute (c to b) are also stopped wood – like the Stop’d Diapason Bass – but with square perforated stoppers. The remaining 32 pipes of the Wald Flute are open woods with metal tuning flaps running chromatically from bass to treble.
The Gamba 8, added in 1896, is uniquely made of spotted metal, with the lowest octave (C to B) made of stopped wood. There are 40 spotted metal pipes running from bass to treble, plus four spotted metal pipes at the treble end. The tuning of the metal pipes is slotted. There are six stopped wood pipes at each end, two of which are off the chest at each end on mini-clamps.
SWELL PIPEWORK
As mentioned above, the pipes form a pyramid shape within the Swell box.
The Piccolo 2′ is spaciously located at the rear of the box. The lowest 20 pipes are open woods with metal flaps for tuning. The remaining pipes are plain metal, 12 pipes on either side.
The Horn Diapason 8′ is second from the rear. There are only 42 plain metal pipes within the box. The lowest two pipes, c and c# are located outside the box on the treble side, jammed inbetween the box and the Pedal bourdon pipes. The pipes from e” to g”’ are marked “Hn Diap” but those from d#” down to d have two sets of markings, the set scraped towards the top of the pipes marked as “Gam” while those near the foot are marked “Ped Gam”. So some of these pipes may have been redeployed from another planned instrument, or the client may have changed preferences late in the day.
The Stop’d Diapason 8′ is third from the rear and comprises stopped wood pipes throughout.
The top 16 pipes on either side of the pyramid are coloured brown, while the ten lowest notes are black! All have square perforated stoppers. The two lowest notes are located outside the Swell box on the bass side, c and c#. As mentioned, the lowest octave (C to B) of pipes are duplicated by the Pedal Bourdon.
Left: the lowest two notes of the Swell Stop’d Diapason, outside the Swell box.
Middle: one of the rogue Harmonic Flute pipes stuck amongst the top treble pipes.
Right: The Swell Piccolo in its spacious surroundings.
Like many Walker examples, the Harmonic Flute 4′ has not one, but four holes in each pipe, half way up. There are 17 metal pipes on the bass side of the pyramid and 18 on the treble side. In the middle the lowest pipes are wooden, six open woods with metal flaps and one stopped wood. Two extra pipes, which seemed to have g and g# markings, are located at the outer edges of the box, thus providing 44 pipes on this rank altogether within the Swell box. Making wind channels in the soundboard for these two rogue pipes must have taxed the bench
hands in the workshop just a little?
The Oboe 8′ added in 1896 also has a proliferation of holes in the Walker style, this time at the tops of all the resonators. In common with most organs, the top four notes, two on either side, are flues. All 44 Oboe pipes are located, in order, within the Swell box.
Above: On the most recent visit it was possible to get a photo of some of the pedal action, which can only be seen on a photograph, as it’s impossible to see otherwise!
Overall, the sound of the organ projects surprisingly well down the church, given the organ’s “Anglican” position at the side of the chancel, suggesting that the builders may have taken good account of the building and its acoustics when voicing on site.
AB 4ix24 [revised 4viii25]