Organists’ Review August 2009 39

Tucked away out of sight near the endof an elegant cul-de-sac just off HolbornCircus, a few yards from the CityTempleand StAndrew’s Church, hides the ancientchurch of St Etheldreda, Ely Place. Itsmost unexpected existence and spacioussplendour is explained by its uniquehistory. As the church is of suchimportance and yet so little-known I donot apologise for telling readers about itin some detail. St Etheldreda’s excellentwebsite tells of centuries of rich history,the church’s life being intertwined withmany famous historical figures. Here aresome edited and condensed extracts:

St Etheldreda’s Church was the townchapel of the Bishops of Ely from about1250 to 1570. It is the oldest Catholicchurch in England and one of only tworemaining buildings in London from thereign of Edward I. It was once one ofthe most influential places in London –akin to an independent state – with apalace and vast grounds.The Bishop ofEly’s ‘place’ in London or ‘Ely Place’ asit is now called; the chapel took itsname from one of England’s mostpopular saints of the day, Etheldreda,and was built in 1290 by John DeKirkeby, Bishop of Ely andTreasurer ofEngland under Edward I.Why did theBishops of Ely come to London andparticularly Holborn? First of all, amember of the diocese had bought apiece of property there with the idea ofbuilding a little oratory, but as it wasnecessary for Bishops to have a Londonresidence when Parliament was called,the Bishop of Ely built himself a greatpalace.

Bishop John died, leaving his propertytogether with its liberties to the successorsof the See of Ely.The whole estate wasadministered by the See of Ely and wasoutside the jurisdiction of the City of

London.From 1316 were added a palace,orchards, vineyards, gardens andploughlands until it encompassed anarea of fifty-eight acres.

It is here at Ely House that Shakespearehas John O’Gaunt making one of thefinest speeches in the English language.It is the oration in Richard II:

This royal throne of kings, thisscepter’d isle,This Earth ofmajesty, this seat of Mars,?Thisother Eden, demi-Paradise,?This fortress built by Naturefor herself Against infectionand the hand of war,?Thisblessed plot, this Earth, thisrealm, this England.

It was at St Etheldreda’s that the BlackPrince, brother of John O’Gaunt, kept theFeast of Trinity in 1357 and orderedsixteen swans from the Thames to besent to Ely House. Medieval chroniclestalk about the cloister and the gardensof St Etheldreda’s, saying howwonderful they were with their fields ofsaffron and strawberries, which are evenmentioned in Shakespeare’s Richard III.

In 1576, the Bishop of Ely granted a leaseto Sir Christopher Hatton for £10, afew loads of hay and one red rose ayear. Sir Christopher built HattonHouse, a magnificent building, and tookover most of the Ely lands and gardens.Of‘Hatton Garden’ only the well-knownstreet now remains.Ninety years later, theGreat Fire of London swept through theCity and destroyed everything in its pathuntil it reached St Etheldreda’s.The windchanged and the ancient church wassaved. Sadly, over the next one hundredyears the Bishops of Ely allowed Ely Placeto deteriorate.The gardens were unkemptwith rabbits running wild and themedieval palace was a palace no longer.

An Act of Parliament in 1772 enabledthe Bishop to sell the decaying propertyto the Crown.The Crown in turn soldthe freehold site to Charles Cole,architect and surveyor. He demolishedevery building but the chapel and onthe vacant ground in 1775 built thepresent Ely Place. He modernised thechapel, bringing it into line withGeorgian taste, and used it to serve as aplace of Anglican worship for theresidents of the neat terraces of theGeorgian houses he had built. Despitehis efforts, the underlying condition ofSt Etheldreda’s continued todeteriorate.The opportunity for itsrestoration did not arise for a furthertwenty years; then the whole of ElyPlace had to be sold to settle a lawsuitbetween Charles Cole’s descendants.

In 1829, the Catholic Emancipation Actwas passed and for the first time for 300years it was no longer illegal for Catholicsto have churches and say Mass. In June of1835, three Italian priests arrived atTilbury.They were members of theInstitute of Charity, founded by AntonioRosmini, later to become known asRosminians.They introduced into Englanda new form of clerical dress, the Romancollar or ‘dog’ collar. Within a decade theRosminians were largely to transformthe shy face of English Catholicism suchas was emerging after the CatholicEmancipation of 1829.These priests wereto give it a bolder,more dramatic, dynamicand devotional aspect.The Society,consisting of both priests and lay brothers,is dedicated to universal charity and sois open, under Providence, to any workin the service of the Church.

A notable convert from the AnglicanChurch, Cardinal Archbishop ofWestminster,Henry Manning (1808–92),wished the Rosminians to serve in the slum

SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW

London’s best kept secretPaul Hale writes about the new organ of St Etheldreda’s Church, Ely Place, Holborn, London

40 Organists’ Review August 2009

areas of Holborn.FatherWilliam Lockhart(1820–92) was chosen for this task.Fr Lockhart was another Oxford convertand friend of the man who was to becomethe other great English Cardinal, JohnNewman (1801–90); it was Lockhart’sconversion in 1843/4 that finallyconvinced Newman that he too shouldbecome a Catholic. In December 1873,Lockhart learned that the ancient Chapelof St Etheldreda’s was about to be sold byauction. For the modest bid of £5,400 StEtheldreda’s was acquired by theRosminians. Five years after the auction,Father Lockhart completed the restorationof the Upper Church and on June 23rd1878 Solemn High Mass was celebratedfor the first time for over 200 years.

St Etheldreda’s was soon a thrivingcommunity, as it still is, despite seriousdamage inWorldWar II. It remains tothis day under Rosminian direction.

Of early organs in St Etheldreda’sdetails are scant, though the January 1914Organist and Choirmaster is said to havementioned an organ by Snetzler dated1750. During the restoration of thechurch, J.F. Bentley, the architect ofWestminster Cathedral, designed themagnificent choir screen with its wroughtiron grilles and gate.The slender andshallow screen incorporates a confessional,the organ and a choir gallery. Bentleyregularly worked with the organbuilderT.C. Lewis, most notably atWestminsterCathedral in the first decade of thetwentieth century, where they installeda twin-cased Apse organ with no pipesshowing – a development on what theyhad installed at Ely Place some tenyears earlier.The Apse organ had astrange stop list: Great 8.8.8.4.4.2.8,Swell 8.8.8.8.8.[sic], Pedal 32.16.8.For Ely Place a somewhat more orthodox

scheme was carried out (under a ‘Lewis& Co’ nameplate, and a constructiondate of around 1897).The Lewistrademark spotted metal pipes were muchin evidence, especially in the case pipes,with their typical Lewis ‘French’ mouths.The stop list can be seen to the left.

This instrument was squeezed into apair of matching cases facing one anotheracross the length of the screen.Typicalof Bentley was a carved oak screen onthe north side, behind which stood theswell-box.The console was placed inthe middle, player facing East, with thechoir and conductor arranged either side.

The original electric action (driven bybatteries) was replaced byWillis in 1960,with help from the organist and his wife!After this the instrument was cared forby theWillis tuner,Arthur Seare, whoachieved posthumous fame through fallingto his death while tuning theWillis Grand

SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW

T.C. Lewis specificationGREAT ORGAN

Bourdon 16Open Diapason 8Lieblich Gedact 8Dulciana 8Octave 4FlautoTraverso 4Flautino 2Swell to Great

(by pedal only – there was no other stop-controlfor this!)

SWELL ORGAN

Geigen Principal 8Rohr-Flöte 8Voile [sic] de Gambe 8

(bass grooved into Rohrflöte)Voix Céleste 8Geigen Principal 4Trumpet 8TremulantSwell Octave

PEDAL ORGAN

Sub-Bass 16(borrowed from Great Bourdon)

‘Pedal Octave’(this was a pedal which engaged the Sub-Bass at 8ftpitch, regardless of whether or not the stopwas drawn)

Swell to Pedal(by stop-key)

Great to Pedal(by pedal only – there was no other stop-controlfor this!)

Compass 58/30 notes

Flat, straight pedalboard

Stop control by tablets either side of the keyboards

Three toe levers to Swell and three to Great

Electric blower – originally hand-blown from the gallery

Balanced Swell pedal

Four reservoirs, which filled the areas below impostlevel in both cases

St Ethelreda’s Bentley case containing the Lewis organ

Organists’ Review August 2009 41

SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW

Organ atWestminster Cathedral whichhe had nursed with devotion for manyyears.The Lewis was then overhauled in1986 by Mander, who replaced magnets,switchgear, some wiring and the blower.Mander struggled to make the organreliable for the following reasons:

1 because of the extraordinarily tightlayout of the organ within the cases,access was at best perilous and atworst impossible.The basses of manystops could not be reached, neithercould many under-actions nor anystop-actions.

2 the soundboards were baked andsplit, leading to ‘runnings’ betweenthe pipes and the constant problemof stop-sliders sticking, so stopswere either on or off or partly on.

3 the larger bass pipes were collapsingunder their own weight leading tonotes off, speech defects, and pipesleaning on one another.

4 the wind supply was somewhatunreliable, prone to being unsteady,and the blower was slightly under-powered for full organ, so the windreservoirs would ‘bottom-out’under full demand, the pitchconsequently sagging.

5 with age the regulation of the pipespeech and volume had reallysuffered, so ranks were uneven withinthemselves in volume, tone andspeech. Some stops were worse thanothers: the reed and strings were bad,the Diapasons bad in the bass; onlythe flutes generally still spoke well.

6 more and more parts were simplywearing out with age.

Some of these matters could have beenaddressed if the organ had been fullyrestored; however, the fundamentalproblem remained the layout – thetightest and most contorted imaginable –and without an improvement to that(which was impossible) it was consideredby all concerned that the organ wouldnever be reliable or adequately maintained.

Tonally the sound left much to bedesired, both in stop-list and voicing.Thescale and voicing treatment of some ofthe ranks led to a lack of blend: theSwell Viole and Celeste were very small

Original Lewis stop-tabs

Photo of East end with part of new console

42 Organists’ Review August 2009

SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW

scale and of the ‘scratchy’ variety – theyblended with nothing; the Great OpenDiapason and Principal were of quitelarge scale but had been softened: theywere fluty and dull; the Great Dulcianawas so soft and so slow in speech as tobe of no use for anything.The 2ft Flautinowas neither a Fifteenth nor a Piccolo –just an unhappy compromise of little use.TheTrumpet was brassy and irregularand could not do double-duty as anOboe orTrumpet, as a solitary Swellreed needs to.

By the early years of the presentcentury it was clear to the long-timeRector, Fr Kit Cunningham, that thesensible course of action wasreplacement with a new pipe organdesigned for the church’s specific needs(the accompaniment of a smallprofessional choir in a wide range ofmass settings and other works, allembellishing the traditional Latin Mass

for which the church is renowned) andlaid out so that maintenance access wouldbe possible in the future. ProvincialSuperior of the Rosminians is Fr DavidMyers, who had caused in 2006 to beinstalled in his Cardiff church (St Peter’s,Roath) a new organ by Späth Orgelbauof Rapperswil (Switzerland).Thesuccess of this instrument encouragedhim to recommend a new organ forSt Etheldreda’s from the same company.

In conjunction with Ely Placemusicians, Simon Lloyd and Stuart Kale,Späth conceived a colourful two-manualscheme which places the Swell beneaththe Great on the North side, the Pedalfilling the South case.The console issituated on the North side (the player’s

back being to the North case) and thetrackers run under the gallery floor,North and South of the console. Eachcase contains a blower and wind regulator(two in the North case).The new tonalscheme is found on the left.

The Lewis was taken out and stored,the gallery refurbished and the Späthorgan installed over the winter/springof 2008/9. Despite being tonally largerthan the Lewis it had to fit the Bentleycases.Whereas the Swell fitted neatlyinto the lower half of the North case(with shutters facing South and East),the Great and Pedal had to accommodateboth an awkward shape and roof trusses.The bass of the Pedal Posaune is situatedin the screen on the south side (on electric

Späth specificationGREAT ORGAN

Bourdon 16 (ext. Rohrflöte)Principal 8 (case pipes)Rohrflöte 8Viola da Gamba 8Octave 4 (case pipes)Holzflöte 4 (open)Quinte 2DSuperoctave 2Tierce 1FMixtur III 2, 1B, 1Trompete 8Swell to Great

SWELL ORGAN

Bourdon 8Salicional 8 (C–A from Bourdon)Unda maris 8 (from C13)Fugara 4Traversflöte 4 (harmonic)Flageolet 2Mixtur III 1B, 1,DOboe 8Tremulant

PEDAL ORGAN

Subbass 16 (wood)Octavbass 8 (case pipes)Bourdonbass 8 (ext. Subbass)Choralbass 4 (case pipes)Posaune 16 (wood)Great to PedalSwell to Pedal

Great & Pedal Combinations CoupledGenerals on Swell toe pistons

Compass 58/30 notes

Straight, concave pedalboard

Stop and coupler control by knobs either side of thekeyboards

Comprehensive combination system of divisionals (8 toeach), reversibles, generals (8) and a stepper, with 256memory levels for the generals and eight for the divisionals

Elevation drawing of the new internal layout

Organists’ Review August 2009 43

action to ensure prompt repetition –not always managed with tubed-off orconveyed-off reed basses), and the GreatMixtur andTrompete are cleverly elevatedabove the Great soundboard against theNorth wall, thus allowing more readytuning access on that side.The Swellspeaks through elegant Bentley-esquepiercings in the oak panelling which lookas if they had always been there.Tuningaccess to the Swell is gained by removingthe panelling on the south face andhinging the (quite small) shutter-frontout of the way – an ingenious solution.

The pipework is of 75% tin for the

Principals and strings, 40% tin for the two8ft manual flutes and the two mutations,which stops are scaled and voiced quiteflutily.The front pipes are 85% tin, withFrench mouths which echo Lewis’s workand yet are typical also of Späth.Woodenpipe bodies are made of particularlyclose-grain spruce, an example of thefine timbers readily available to Späth intheir part of Switzerland.

Care has been taken not to adopt thesmall scales which a chapel-sized churchand diminutive organ cases might suggest.Instead, pipes have been scaled generouslyand voiced with a warm ‘vocal’ sound

to ensure beauty of tone, easy speechand perfect blend within the organ orwith the choir.The tone does indeedbloom beautifully in the warm acoustic;inevitably some stops (such as the trebleof the Great 4ft flute) find a particularresonance within the church and need tobe used with discretion.The Principalchoruses are quite wonderful – rich andwarm yet clear and precise; a sound towhich one could listen for hours.The keyaction is agreeable, the Great being firmerthan the Swell; the coupled weight istolerable though perhaps a touch heavierthan one might like for toccata playing.The Swell-box is effective; it needs tobe, given the player’s close proximityand the vital role of the Swell as thechurch choir’s accompanimental division.

A look inside reveals first-ratecraftsmanship throughout, combined withreal attention to detail and excellenceof finish.All actions and pipework canbe reached for tuning and maintenance,though space remains at a premium.The low-level console shows the hoursof design work which went into itslayout, rendering it as ‘standard’ aspossible to British players withoutlosing the Späth house-style.

The organ’s tonal resources willenrich the fine musical tradition at StEtheldreda’s; readers are encouraged tohear it by attending the superb sungMass on Sundays at 11am for which thechurch is renowned (see theircomprehensive website).

The organ was blessed and heardpublicly for the first time at the EasterVigil 2009; music included theVierneMesse Solennelle and the Demessieux TeDeum. Dame GillianWeir performedthe inaugural recital (as she did on theCardiff Späth) on 5 June; one hopes aregular recital series will be instituted.

SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW

Späth workshop drawing of the new console

Independent Organ Advice

Details of services and memberswww.aioa.org.uk

AIOAAssociation of Independent Organ Advisers

Paul Hale MA FRCO FRSA Accredited Member of the AIOA

Organ Consultant

Technical and musical advice for any type of organ project;an experienced, comprehensive and national service.

Current clients include parish churches, cathedrals,concert halls, universities and public schools.

PaulHale@diaphone.clara.net www.PaulHale.org4 Vicars’ Court, Southwell, Notts NG25 0HP 01636 812228