With Organist Robin Walker of St George S Church, Hanover Square, London

Organ Day

With Organist Robin Walker of St George’s Church, Hanover Square, London

Saturday 14 February 2015

At The Beacon at Nether Green Methodist Church, Sheffield, S11 7EH

(No 120 Fulwood Bus stops almost by the church)

3.00 – 3.45pmAn introduction to the organ for children aged 4 – 11. Admission free.

7.00 – 8.15pmOrgan Concert by Robin Walker. Free with donations.

For more information, call 0114 229 5018 or email:

The organ is a historic and original 1863 “Father Willis” three manual organ. The organist is Robin Walker St Georges Church Hanover Square wife, Alison, is a minister in the Cambridge Circuit.)

This event can be seen as special in many ways – first as anorgan concert by a leading London younger organist. St George’s is the parish church of Mayfair and it was the church Handel attended. Second, it really is a very special opportunity for children.

The organ was the gift of Mark Firth for the Broomhill New Connexion Church (not to confused with Broomhill Wesleyan Church nearby), and was opened in January 1864 by Samuel Sebastian Wesley, the grandson Charles Wesley and organists of Winchester Cathedral organ at that time.

(Winchester Cathedral itself had a very famous early Father Willis, though not as with all his cathedral organs it has been modified.)

The church was bombed in WWII, but astonishingly, the organ survived intact. It was moved, without alteration, to its present location when the churches merged. However, it was lost to history until 1971. The organ at Nether Green is known as“The Hallam Organ” because this was its title prior to the four churches coming together that form “The Beacon Church”. The organ has over 1800 pipes and three manuals.

There have been many recitals over the years by distinguished organists, which have all helped to raise awareness and appreciation of the instrument. Also,over the years, parties have visited it from near and far. It is the only organ in Sheffield that has been awarded a historic organ certificate by the British Institute of Organ Studies.This is a highly regarded body with links to Cambridge University, which has set up a “National Pipe-Organ Register” of historic organs, grading them to standards comparable to those for listed buildings. However, organs have no legal protection.

To find out more about Father Willis, this is a half hour radio 4 programme (9 April 2011) on Father Willis:

Anyone who has watched a BBC Prom or visited St Paul's or Salisbury or Hereford or Truro Cathedral will have seen a "Father Willis" organ. This programme tells the story of the man who through a blend ofengineering ability, musical ambition and massive self-confidence became the dominant organ builder of the Victorian era. It was an era in which huge organs were suddenly required in both cathedrals and the new town halls appearing all over the country.

Simon Townley tells the story of 'Father' Henry Willis from his relatively humble beginnings as the son of a London builder to the heights of Victorian society. By winning a competition at the Great Exhibition in 1851, Willis set himself on a road which was to lead to the building of over a thousand organs. Many are still working today, even if they've been altered over the years. What makes the Willis organs special, and makes organists today acknowledge their greatness in hushed tones, is the subject of this programme.

Simon visits the current Willis factory in Liverpool where new organs are still built and old Willis machines are revitalised.

He plays the organ in Winchester Cathedral, the organ that won the Great Exhibition competition and was squeezed into the Cathedral by the then organist S.S.Wesley, and he finds out more about the man whose love of yachting was matched only by his belief that anything was possible when it came to the building of organs. If that meant splitting an organ in two, putting the two parts on either side of a cathedral transept and linking the whole lot through a system of subterranean pipes then that's what he would do... and he did, in the case of St Paul's Cathedral.

But essentially the Father Willis story is about the details that earned his reputation. The reed technology that no one at the time could match, the use of new steam-generated wind and the design of organ consoles that gave organists like Willis himself a control that they'd never enjoyed before.

It's a story of the king of instruments built at a time of supreme national self-confidence by a man who embodied the spirit of the age and gave it voice.