House Organs (Part 2)

Aaron Marchant is the owner of this instrument which was built by Ken Jones in the mid 1980s for Peter Sweeney. It is a twomanual practice instrument and has one stop on each manual The stops are not named  but the upper manual stop is certainly a flute (8 ft) and that on the lower manual sounds like a stopped diapason (again 8 ft). The pedal organ uses the bottom octaves of the lower manual stop at 16 ft pitch. There is provision on the soundboard for three more

The organ owned by Maeve Coughlan has to be seen to be believed — it surely must be unique! She said to me, as we ascended the stairs of her house to a small upstairs bedroom, to be prepared for a surprise. First sight of the organ gave the impression that it could be an electronic instrument, until I looked up — the pipework is up above the rafters in the ceiling-less room! The short pipes stand upright on their own soundboards and the long pipes lie flat on the joists.
This organ was built by Trevor Crowe in 1998 and contains pipework and other bits and pieces from organs
removed from churches or surplus to rebuilding jobs.
Basically it is made up of just two stops, a diapason and a flute, but at a selection of pitches.
The Choir Organ (top manual) consists of Gedackt (8), Flute (4), Nazarfd (12/3), Recorder (2) and Tierce (13/5) and there is a Choir to Great coupler. When all the stops are sounding, the effect is very much a reedy sound — reminiscent of a horn stop perhaps.
The Great Organ has a Principal (8), Principal (4), Fifteenth (2), Gedackt (8), Flute (4) and there is a Choir to Great coupler. The Pedal has a Bourdon (16), a Gedackt (8) and a Principal (4). Choir to Pedal and Great to Pedal couplers complete the specification. stops.

Friends and colleagues gathered for the opening ceremony in June 1998 (I was told that the party went on until 5 a.m. the next morning!). Trevor Crowe cuts the red ribbon and declares the organ playable!