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With a view to establishing what might need to be done to bring our organ back to life, we commissioned a survey and report from Dr. William McVicker, Curator of Organs at the Royal Festival Hall. Before coming to school, Dr. McVicker wanted to check up what type of organ we had, but he was surprised to find no mention of it on the National Organ Register.
At school we had never considered that it was anything other than original to our 1883 chapel. Dr. McVicker was therefore expecting to find an organ made by Christopher Lewis with whom the architect of our chapel (John Francis Bentley) often collaborated. To his surprise when he opened the organ desk, he found that the stops were in French.
Dr. McVicker was immediately drawn to the stop 'Flute Pyramidale' which he has only ever seen once before on a rare organ made by Hippolyte Loret in Notre Dame du Finisterre in Brussels. Loret however never worked in England and so big questions remained about who built it and why were the stops in French. People don't 'move' organs -it was all very puzzling but Dr. McVicker commented that it it was indeed proven to be a Loret organ, it would be only one in the UK and the rarest organ he had ever seen.
A challenge was set to try to establish its provenance!
