John Page - organ builder

Organ restoration - part 1

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This article is a full account of the restoration of one of the most well-known fairground organs in England, a task which took almost exactly two years to complete. It was fraught with problems a restorer usually encounters, and some he should never encounter,

History
First, a potted history of the organ, the 89-key Marenghi of Irvins of Ashford, Middlesex. The picture on the right was taken in 1940, when the organ was already about 30 years old. It was bought by the Irvin family in 1914, after two earlier instruments had played themselves out and been tipped off the trailer and burned in the yard. Along with friends Judith Howard and Andy Tidman I first came across this magnificent organ at the Christmas fair at Covent Garden in London in 1982. It was playing abominably, and we agreed to help improve it for its next outing at Hampton Court the following Easter. Its owner then was Benny Irvin senior, the great grandson of the first Irvin who owned the organ. Benny had lost the details of where it came from, as it hadn't been new. It was originally built in the Paris workshops of C H Marenghi et Cie we believe in 1909, with serial number 2308. Charles Marenghi had been foreman to the Gavioli works, also in Paris.

It was discovered during our work in 1983 that the organ had undergone overhauls in 1947 by Ben Varetto and in 1974 by Victor Chiappa. The only work carried out in 1983 was the re-leathering of the action, resetting of the keyframe, and some attention to the reed pipes. The pipework was in a poor state of repair and not generally playing well, but Benny would not have this work done for cost and time reasons. However, we did the best we could, and the organ played well at the 1983 Easter fair, in the family's 3-abreast gallopers as usual.

Some work was carried out in 1990, by someone who shall be unnamed here. It was not of the best quality. Suffice to say that Benny Irvin was reluctant to spend serious money on the project.

This grand organ operates with cardboard book music, which runs through the keyframe mounted on the end of the organ, shown here when the organ was borrowed to play in the Rodeo Switchback at the Great Dorset Steam Fair in 1984. There are 89 keys distributed as follows:
8 for bass - 5 ranks
8 for trombone - 1 rank
8 for accompaniment - 4 ranks
19 for melody - 8 ranks
17 for piccolo - 4 ranks + glockenspiel
20 for counter-melody - 8 ranks
3 for drums and cymbal
5 for registers + register cancel
1 for muting

For more pictures from the past, click here.

Preparation
The organ arrived at the yard on 5th September 2003, over a year after leaving the Irvins. I had asked for a down payment to arrive with the organ, but there was no sign of it. Was this an omen for the future, I wondered. The organ was housed in a large lorry fitted with plywood or chipboard sides and a thin ply roof, which was evidently not suitable for housing any organ, let alone a historic one of this importance. The lorry was too high to be driven into the shed, so was at the mercy of the weather. The sides and roof acted like giant radiators which became too hot to touch whenever the sun shone causing the internal temperature to soar. Apart from this, there was no ventilation to aid air circulation. I sensed that I was going to have a rough time with this job.

The saga had begun in 2002, when I was contacted by Ian Cottam who, I believed at the time, had bought the organ. His name was unknown to me. Significantly, I estimated that the job would take only about six months, working alone aided only by Judith Howard, working on the pipes. Our previous work on the organ had taken only three months part-time, so I thought this was feasible. After all, most of the action work had already been done in 1983 and 1990. Mr Cottam seemed keen to get started with the suggestion that I remove some pipes during the organ's journey north from Ashford. This I did at Newport Pagnell motorway services on 6th August 2002, and the pipes (from the clarinet mixture) taken to Judith's workshop. During the following months we exchanged several emails while Mr Cottam tried arranging the organ's transfer to another vehicle. I was arranging to start on another project, but if the Marenghi arrived soon, I would work on it first. By December I decided not to wait any longer, and embarked on the other project. The Marenghi would have to wait.

The truth was eventually revealed to me that the organ was actually in the ownership of Graham Atkinson of Scarborough. Now the job took on a more important feel. With Mr Atkinson, it was owned by a perfectionist in presentation, but a reputation for letting historic organs be altered out of almost all recognition. Rather than a mere overhaul it had to be a significant historic restoration. I had completely forgotten my six-month rough verbal estimate (made to Mr Cottam over a year before, so was now out-of-date anyway) and, together with a complete lack of a written order from Mr Atkinson, I omitted to warn him that the job would take longer, though in subsequent correspondence I kept him informed of progress and unforseen delays.

Dismantling
The first thing I noticed when winding up the blower to see how she played, was the reservoir still lying flat with the blower screaming away. I took off two of the six springs and immediately it rose as it should. Measuring the pressure, my water-gauge read 9½ inches, which was about right. The extra springs were not re-fitted, but left in the lorry as spares. My next task, as with any restoration, was the complete dismantling of the instrument. The most important tool here is a camera. This is used to record in detail where everything is, to help with later assembly. In the old days I used to use a Polaroid, so I was sure of the picture "coming out" before destroying the evidence, as it were. Now of course, it's digital. My first picture was of the complete organ as it was before I started, shown above. First, the façade carvings were removed and the proscenium lowered down from the roof. This, as can be seen in the picture, was not sitting level, but was higher at one end than the other. This was because the tilt (canvas cover) was lying under it. In fact, there was nothing between the carving and the roof of the lorry, which had been bouncing on it all the way from Scarborough. I found that the heavy hinge on the right-hand side had been bent uwards by the weight of the carving which was 9 inches thick. Measuring the lorry, it was found that there was only 7½ inches of space between the top of the organ and lorry roof.

The façade appears perfectly clean and respectable in the picture, but on close inspection it was very rough indeed. There was an incredible amount of flamboyant amber, where it would have originally been gilded. This had probably been applied by Jimmy Williams during his decoration of the façade in the late 1970s, but Benny Irvin himself touched up some of it at the time I was working on the organ in early 1983. Flamboyant is a transparent paint applied over silver (or in this case, aluminium) leaf and, to be perfectly honest, shoddily done. There was also a multitude of holes (some filled) where small electric lights had been mounted. Some of these can be clearly seen in the back view of the proscenium.

I recommended a good local sign-writer and showman's decorator, Colin Dundas. He suggested that the whole façade be treated as historic, and to repair the worst of the breaks and leave minor blemishes. As flamboyant was no longer available, he recommended reverting to genuine gold-leaf, especially as Graham Atkinson wanted the scheme to be as it was originally. This wouldn't be a problem with most of the paint-work as showmen rarely stripped previous finishes before re-painting, but this wasn't the case with the "box" reed pipes, which had been stripped by Benny Irvin in 1983. To have stripped the coloured pipes would have been a mammoth task, so it was decided to keep to the current "Irvin" colours, but refreshed.

Once the façade was out of the way, and the side cases had been un-bolted, I began to remove all the remaining pipes from the organ. The pipework is divided among the various divisions of the organ's musical scale as follows:
In the back of the organ is the clarinet mixture, playing on melody (4 ranks) mounted centrally. Either-side of this are 4 ranks of accompaniment, and then 3 ranks playing on bass. In front of these, ranged across the width of the case are 8 trombone pipes (painted pink), with convoluted mitres under the roof due to their great length. In front of these, mounted in the centre at the back is the largest rank of the clarinet mixture, in front of which are 5 ranks of violins, playing on counter-melody, and in front of these is the clarinet reed (painted amberwith pink sides), playing with the clarinet mixture. Either side of the violins are 3 ranks of "saxophone" comprising a trumpet, painted green, a flue helper, then the saxophone reed itself, painted amber with pink sides. In front of these are 4 ranks of piccolos, ranged in a 2x2 layout. The long ones in front are pan-flutes in brass with wood acorns on top. In a separate case mounted on the front of the organ are 2 ranks of baritone, playing on melody the front one painted amber with pink sides.

This case came off first, and the pipes removed, followed by the pipe-chest and glockenspiel. The case was then lowered to the ground and stored in the shed. All other pipes were then removed rank by rank and labelled, except the trombones and the large basses which were still trapped in the organ. More of these later. The ones destined for delivery to Judith were packed (she would be restoring most of the flue pipes), and the reeds and baritone helper were stored in the shed.

Having got the pipes and façade out of the way, I could concentrate on the rest of the dismantling. The tubing at the back came out first, then the register box and keyframe. The tubing was of a very narrow bore, which I decided not to retain. Then followed the clarinet riser, piccolo risers, violin chest and its associated tubing, and the two saxophone chests. Now I had access to the trombones, which had to be removed one by one, together with their staying brackets. There were far too many of these for my liking (most of them weren't original anyway), and I made a mental note to re-use fewer upon re-installation. An organ like this travels around constantly, with its case moving and flexing. If trombones were fixed firmly to the case roof they are likely to come under great strain and mitres could become broken. The order in which the trombones were removed was recorded on paper, as this information would be an invaluable time-saver later.

Then came the blocks the back pipework had been mounted on, and the riser below that. These items carry the wind from the main chest to the pipes, which are mounted above the primary action from the keyframe. They still had some pipes' feet mounted on them, which had come away at the wrong point, and would have to be removed later. Now the main chest was fully accessible from the top. Looking underneath, I removed the action tubing connecting the bass chest under the floor, and the various connections for wind to the bass chest, side cases and baritone case. There was an extra ventil box fitted to the underside of the chest. This had been an attempt to improve the wind supply to the saxophones to aid accurate tuning, done in 1990. I had had no problems in this regard in the past, so the box, and all its associated tubing was removed and discarded.

Now came the task of removing the main chest itself. This is easily the largest item in the organ, and the heaviest, being 8 feet 6 inches (2.6m) in length. After disconnecting the main wind trunking, the chest was lifted out. Now I had unrestricted access to the wind reservoir which was not original. The organ had lost its two reservoirs and feeders (and cranks) during the 1974 Chiappa overhaul. They were probably now being used in another organ, having been replaced by a centrifugal blower. It was a simple matter to take out this reservoir.

The organ case was now empty, save for sixteen large bass pipes below the floor. At this point the case had to be turned onto its back to gain access to the pipes, aided by the removal of one of the two runners used for bolting the organ to the lorry. I was aghast to find that the organ hadn't been bolted down at all. Instead, a few small screws had been simply forced through the runners into the floor - not straight down, but at an angle across the edge. It's amazing it hadn't been shaken free on the journey.

The bass pipes were attached to their action chest. The octave cellos were removed first, followed by the bourdons, still attached to the chest and two mounting battens. After removal these were separated. During the dismantling of the organ I had measured and counted all the springs and reed tuning wires that needed to be replaced by phosphor-bronze, so the required wire could be ordered. This is where the real work of restoration was to begin. More pictures here.

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