Reminiscences of an Organ Builder.

By David Hudd, F.I.S.O.B.

Following my retirement from Organ Building 3 years ago I have been thinking about the changes that have taken place since I started work in 1949. I had almost 50 years working in the trade, which started in the West of England and ended in Melbourne, Australia. During that time the work took me to many towns, cities and countries viz; Wales, Scotland, Yorkshire, London, Devon, Singapore and West Indies including, Barbados, Trinidad, Guyana, St. Vincent, Grenada, Dominica, Antigua, Montserrat, Jamaica. The latter half of my career was spent in Australia where I have worked in all the States except the Northern Territory.

Naturally, I worked on many organs in that time mostly out on site work erecting, restoring, renovating, cleaning, tuning and maintenance. Until we came to Melbourne to live in 1987 my wife and I had not stayed at any one address for more than 4 years in 28 years of marriage. So I came across many different types and sizes of organs by some of the best English, European and Australian Builders and also some very woeful amateur work. In the 50's we did a lot of building of new extension organs when there were a lot of new modern Church buildings being built which did not lend themselves to straight organs and also to compete price wise with the electronic organ salesmen. We also changed tracker & pneumatic action organs to electro pneumatic action, which of course in later years became a big "sin". Then there came the change from 'Romantic' voicing to 'Classical' and the modern tracker action. I remember thoroughly disliking my first hearing of an 'open-toe' no 'nicking' organ in Yorkshire much to the disgust of the local representative. Fortunately it had a lovely casework and that was the start of a new era for the organ.

I served my time as an un-indentured apprentice with W.G. Vowles Ltd. of Bristol where I worked for 9 years. Unfortunately, Vowles factory had been destroyed in W.W.2 blitz and when I started we had very small premises but after about 12 months we did move into a much bigger and better factory. The firm was well past its heyday but several of the men I worked under had been with the firm for most of their working lives. The foreman had served his early years with T.C. Lewis of London. Several of these men were around 70 years of age and the foreman worked until he was about 85 years of age - he would walk to work a distance of a mile or more and he did that 4 times a day because he went home to lunch. Back in their peak time Vowles had been a very good firm and the fellows would talk about the times when the firm turned out an organ a week. In those days they worked 6 days a week and apprentices did not receive their pay on Saturday afternoons until the Boss was satisfied with the cleanliness of the factory.

I was very interested in an Advertisement in "Organists Review" by Kenneth Jones a year or so ago on a Vowles organ he was working on and I have a copy of the book put out by the firm to which he refers giving a list of organs built & testimonials.

In my early times there we travelled around on buses and trains. I wonder what sort of tuning fees Churches paid in those days because we often went out to a country town or village and only tuned one organ a day because of the amount of travelling time involved. My starting pay was 7 pence an hour and we worked a 5½ day 44 hour week. I believe a man's pay was around 3 shillings an hour. There were still a few organs around which were still hand-blown and to tune the larger ones we had to have 2 boys to assist the tuner, one to blow and one to hold notes. When there was only one, we used key weights to hold the notes down while running around the back to pump. This had to be very smooth in order not to shake the wind supply and to keep the tuner good tempered (no pun intended).

If we had to go away from home working, which was quite frequent, we were only supposed to go home every second weekend if less than 100 miles from the factory and once a month if over 100 miles away. We quite often got around this by working an extra couple of hours each evening to make up the travelling time. The weekend accommodation costs covered the travelling expenses. In those days we stayed in private accommodation (lodging houses) often with people connected with the Church concerned. More often than not one had to share a double bed with ones workmate, which in those days was not considered improper.
I remember the first cleaning I worked on as a boy in an Anglican Church (C. of E.), the Vicar would not even look at us let alone pass the time of day. By contrast, when working in a large Yorkshire Church in winter with snow on the ground, the Church kept enough heat on to prevent the pipes freezing, so the boiler room under the Church was the warmest place, the Vicar would come and chat with us over a hot drink in the boiler house which being coal fired was not the cleanest of places.

Another experience, which remains with me, was working in a cinema removing an organ circa 1951. We had to commence work after the cinema closed at night and we usually worked through until about midday with a break for breakfast. One night about 3.00 a.m. there was a big bang and we were left in darkness. A large 150-watt bulb had burst. It was not a pleasant job to work on because all the pipes and a lot of the metal parts were all sticky and brown from the residue from tobacco smoke, which was allowed in cinemas in Britain in those days. Another time, working in Wales, the Vicar was interested in how their money was being spent and he would often come in to see progress. One day when I was working near the console and my mate was up inside the organ there was a lull in the conversation so after a while he called out to me, "is the old B…. gone?" and the reply went up, "No he is still here but you can carry on smoking".

The biggest contrast I found when I came to Australia was that everyone used Christian names even Cathedral organists. It has been an interesting career and one I would not change but I do wonder what the future holds for the trade. Right throughout my time Churches have always pleaded poverty and with dwindling attendances it is a lot worse now. I know here in Melbourne of a number of Churches where pipe organs are not used either because they have no organists to play them or because guitars, drums and electronic keyboards are the order of the day.

David Hudd.

© February 2002 - ISOB