Halifax & District Organists' Association

The present building in Wharf Street dates from 1819, according to Pevsner, but the date of 1820 can be found carved on the inside of the tower battlements. It was designed by John Oates, who was born in Halifax, trained in Manchester and had his practice in Huddersfield. Apart from Christ Church, other buildings he was also responsible for included The Old Huddersfield Infirmary, St.Paul’s Church, Huddersfield, (now the University Concert Hall), and All Saints Church, Paddock, where he was buried in 1831.

The first organ was installed in 1825, and built by John Ward of York, who also built one other organ in Calderdale, at Square Chapel in 1821. He was apparently the last person to work on the York Minster organ before the great fire there in 1829, and does not seem to have had the best of reputations.

The first organ was opened by Dr.John Camidge, who was then assistant to his father Matthew at the Minster. It had seventeen speaking stops over two manuals and pedals, quite a good size for the times, and cost £400.

The second organ was installed by Conacher of Huddersfield, at a cost of £266. It was opened by Dr.Spark of Leeds on December 6th 1865. One wonders why a new organ was necessary, unless of course the rumours about Ward’s workmanship were true, and his organ was by now considered to be beyond repair. The Conacher organ also had seventeen stops, but cost rather less than Ward’s instrument, at a mere £266.

Both these instruments were located in the west gallery. In 1873-4 the building was extended to provide the existing chancel and organ chamber. Prior to this there had been a small apse at the east end of the nave, the shape of which can still be seen in the boiler room below the chancel. After 1874, the rear part of what is now the organ chamber formed the choir vestry. The Conacher organ was moved from the gallery to the front part of this space.

In 1894 there was a major fire in the church which was reputed to have started in the organ, and destroyed most of the chancel and nave roof, as well as the organ itself. During this fire a local firefighter was killed when he fell through an open trap door in the tower, in thick smoke.

A new organ was provided as part of the reconstruction. This was now the third organ, and was built by Abbott & Smith of Leeds. It was considerably larger than its predecessor and occupied the space of the old choir vestry as well. It had 29 speaking stops over three manuals and pedals, with tubular pneumatic action to the manuals and pedals. This was in fact a very productive decade for Abbott & Smith, as they rebuilt Halifax Parish Church and provided a new action for Park Congregational Church, Halifax in 1896, which was also the year that they rebuilt the organ of Leeds Town Hall. A new organ for St.Judes, Saville Park, Halifax had also been built in 1895. All these organs used the same design of pneumatic action, which although generally reliable, tended to become noisy after several decades of use. Apart from Christ Church, they had all been mechanically altered by the second world war, but at Sowerby Bridge there had been no changes at all, and by 1979 the instrument was in a sorry state.

The present organ was installed in Christ Church between 1979 and 1983. It had originally been built in 1897 for the nearby Bolton Brow Methodist Church, by J.J.Binns of Bramley, Leeds. The organ retains the oak case and four stops from the Abbott and Smith instrument. The work was done by the Sowerby Bridge Organ Group, a non-professional group of three enthusiasts, Richard Barnes, Brian Biggin and George Barnard, while the final tonal finishing was done by John Walls, of Rushworth & Dreaper Ltd. The instrument was converted to electro-pneumatic action, with direct electric action for the stops, and a piston switchboard behind the music desk. A new BOB blower was also installed. The instrument has 42 speaking stops, and the vast majority of the pipes are made of spotted metal, including three additional ranks by Brindley of Sheffield, 1869, from the organ of the nearby former Warley Congregational Church. It was re-opened on October 22nd 1983 by Philip Tordoff of Halifax Parish Church.