The organ at Clungunford Parish Church was presented to the church by John Charles Levenson Rocke. It was dedicated on 19 October 1895 by the Archbishop of York at a service attended by the Bishop of Hereford, when the recently restored church was rededicated.
James J. Binns of Leeds was chosen to build the organ, because of the high reputation for the quality of his work. His organ at Clungunford is made of the finest materials, finished to a very high standard, with an oak case containing some of the spotted metal pipes of the Great Open Diapason. The instrument uses Binns’ own Patent Pneumatic Action; the bill for construction and installation was £758 5s.
Because of its high-quality construction, the organ has needed much less maintenance than other instruments of the same vintage. Based partly on the writings of Frank Mitchell, on pages 88-92 of The Organ in April 1982, we have established that the organ has undergone three restorations of varying degree:
1. In 1928, the organ received its first cleaning and overhaul, and the fitting of tuning slides (to avoid the damage inherent in “cone-tuning”), by William Andrews & Sons of Bradford, at a cost of £77 10s.
2. In 1949, an electric blower was installed.
3. In 1981, the instrument was sympathetically cleaned, overhauled, and restored by Terence Aistrup of Horncastle, Lincolnshire, who was an expert in tubular-pneumatic action. The cost was £2,789.43, and this sum was raised largely due to the efforts of Gordon Hayes, who lived with his wife, Marion, at Bentley House.
Wisely—and in a relatively rare sequence of events—all of the above work was conducted without any tonal alterations, such as those that have marred many other instruments (at considerable expense) during the “neo-baroque” craze of the 1950s and 1960s. In other words, the instrument still remains an honest-to goodness English parish church organ. It is now maintained by Nicholsons of Malvern.
The St. Cuthbert’s J.J. Binns organ is a fine instrument, whose sound is greatly enhanced by the remarkably resonant acoustic of the church. The individual stops are beautifully voiced and offer a wide range of tonal colour, from gentle strings and flutes to a weighty Open Diapason and fiery Trumpet on the Great organ. In combination the stops provide the player with a wide variety of sounds, from distant echo effects to a very grand full organ.
The 100th anniversary of the organ was commemorated on 8th July 1995 by a concert given by the Ashbrook Singers (directed by the late Tom Baker) and the late Jim Wilkes, who illustrated the various tonalities of the instrument and also played a selection of “old favourites.” Jim (then a resident of Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A.) was an evacuee from Southampton during World War II, living with his grandmother in nearby Wistanstow. Jim first visited St. Cuthbert’s in 1944, with his neighbour, Graham Jukes, who was then organist at the church. Over the years Jim Wilkes have been great friends to the church.
The organ has two manuals and twenty-two speaking stops. Its specification is given below:
GREAT ORGAN
Bourdon – 16
Open Diapason – 8
Hohl Flute – 8
Dolce – 8
Principal – 4
Flute Harmonique – 4
Piccolo – 2
Trumpet – 8
SWELL ORGAN
Geigen Principal – 8
Lieblich Gedact – 8
Echo Dulciana – 8
Gamba – 8
Unda Maris – 8
Salicet – 4
Dulciana Mixture – III ranks
Oboe – 8
Horn – 8
Tremulant
PEDAL ORGAN
Bourdon – 16
Contre Bass – 16
Quint – 10 2/3
Octave Bass – 8
Flute Bass – 8
ACCESSORIES
Couplers: Great to Pedal, Swell to Pedal
Seven Combination Pedals, Swell to Great
Reversible Pedal Great to Pedal
Balanced Swell Pedal