Weem: Weem Parish Church
J W Walker & Sons, 1875 — organ surveyed August 2024
LAYOUT, KEY ACTION & STOP ACTION
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 façade is gilded, and was originally, although comparison of the pipes as they are now with old photographs of the organ in the church vestry suggest 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.
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, quite 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.
Left: the Swell rollerboard. Right: the Great action behind the music desk.
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.
The Pedal (Bourdon) action runs through under the reservoir to the rear of the organ where it is transmitted to a 29 note 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 29 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.
The manual to pedal coupler action is presumably located behind the pedalboard on the left hand side; this is impossible to see or reach as a recent light fitting seems to prevent the removal of the wooden panel which protects it. It must have been revamped when the Swell to Pedal was added.
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.
Right: Swell stop trundles traversing the organ under some Rushworth & Dreaper 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. The pedalboard originally was specified as running from C to e’ (29 notes), but it may have been replaced sometime in the early 20th century by a concave but straight pedalboard running from C to f’. A lever Swell pedal was replaced by a balanced Swell pedal in 1994. At some stage – perhaps around the 1920s – a Swell to Pedal mechanism was added, at first operated only by a pedal. A small stop was installed in the middle of the left jamb in 1994 so that this function could be activated by the player’s hand. 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 four combination pedals, two for each manual department; originally only two were specified for the Great. A brass plaque installed above the console reads “J.W. Walker & Sons, London 1875”; its design is different from all the various designs of plaques illustrated in Nicholas Plumley’s book (click here to view). There is also a plaque in memory of Sir Robert Menzies whose family based at nearby Weem Castle endowed this church and so much in the Aberfeldy area.
The winding 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.
Left: bellows weights and some Bourdon action 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 façade. A 16′ bourdon might have been added, but only a small part of this is occupied – by a few of the conveyances leading to the façade 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 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). Two extra pipes have had to be placed outside the swell box 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 original correspondence with the builder indicates, a manual 16 foot stop might have been originally envisaged for this position.
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, with only two pipes located at the treble end of the chest. The remaining 17 pipes form the front façade 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, with eight larger pipes located on the treble end of the chest. The remaining four bass pipes are located on the sides of the façade. Only the middle c pipe remains cone-tuned.
The Dulciana 8′ has 40 plain metal pipes running from bass to treble, with 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 octave of pipes, operated as the Stop’d Diapason Bass have stopped wooden pipes with finely bevelled mushroom stoppers; five are located at the bass end of the chest and six at the treble end. Where the twelfth pipe is, I have no idea! The lowest ten notes of the Wald Flute (c to a) are also stopped wood – like the Stop’d Diapason also painted black but less scrappy-looking now – 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. For the lowest octave there are six stopped wood pipes at each end, two of which are off the chest at each end on mini-clamps.
Left: the Great pipework. Right: the Swell pipework.
As mentioned above, the pipes form a pyramid shape within the Swell box.
On the Swell, the Piccolo 2′ is spaciously located at the rear of the box. The lowest 18 pipes are open woods with metal flaps for tuning. The remaining 24 pipes are plain metal, 12 pipes on either side of the wooden ones.
The Horn Diapason 8′ is second from the rear. There are 42 plain metal pipes only. The lowest two pipes, c and c#, may be grooved into the Stop’d Diapason. 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#.
Left: one of the rogue Harmonic Flute pipes stuck amongst the top treble pipes.
Middle: the lowest two notes of the Swell Stop’d Diapason, outside the Swell box.
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. 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′ 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.
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