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Sacred Heart High School is committed to raising funds for the repair and restoration of the very precious organ in our chapel, recently discovered to be one of the rarest in Europe. We had believed the organ to be original to our 1883 chapel but then discovered with pride and delight, its real provenance.
The organ was commissioned from the Flemish organ builder Hippolyte Loret, by the Society of the Sacred Heart around 1861 or 1862, for their headquarters site, at that time, in Paris. This large site was bounded by the Rue de Varenne to the north and Boulevard des Invalides to the West. It included a boarding school in a large mansion with a separate chapel, a long garden with a turreted mother house at the end and beyond that a half-board (day) school and a poor school. The organ was built for the chapel of the day school in a building known as Maison des Anges.
Hippolyte Loret wrote to the Society apologising for the size of his bill which he justified by the number of 'special features' he had included in the organ's construction.
In the early 1900s, the bitter hostility to religion of the French government led to the closure of convents across France, with sisters forcibly expelled. French authorities announced their intention to seize the Society's headquarters in Paris, where the organ was located. Officials demanded access to make an inventory.
Knowing ultimately that their eviction was inevitable, the sisters used delaying tactics to avoid granting access to the authorities. Determined to save the organ, the sisters dismantled it and smuggled it across the Channel in 1904. Archival records relating to our school include a journal. The entry on 5 February 1904 includes: 'We are being enriched from our persecuted French Houses...a clock and the organ...are received with mingled feelings of gratitude and regret.'
As the sisters had feared, their headquarters site in Paris was indeed later seized by French authorities. Today it is the Musée Rodin with one of the convent chapels as its gift shop!
The organ is is need of significant restoration and the electrics and pump are also in need of repair.
The project requires the organ to be dismantled and removed for a period before reinstallation in the chapel. Following a tender process, the decision on which contractor is selected to carry out the works is expected before Christmas 2025 together with an estimate of the overall costs involved. A fundraising campaign including applications to trust funds and others will be launched to try to raise the funds needed to carry out the work.
The school is incredibly excited at the prospect of being able to share the wonder of this instrument with the public, through concerts and recitals. We are also of course also thrilled at the prospect of re-introducing organ lessons and organ music to daily school life.
You can read more about the organ below. Donations for this project are very welcome.
For further information please contact
Alex Dijkhuis, Director of Communications & Development: comms@sacredh.lbhf.sch.uk
Dr William McVicker, Organ Curator at London's Festival Hall and Chair of the Institute of British Organ Studies wrmcvicker@aol.com
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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 report from Dr. William McVicker, Curator of Organs at the Royal Festival Hall. This was later updated following confirmation of the organ's provenance. You can read the report here: survey report.
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.
Dr. McVicker was expecting to find an organ made by Christopher Lewis with whom the architect of our chapel (John Francis Bentley) often collaborated, but to his surprise when he opened the organ desk, he found that the stops were in French. This was definitely not a Lewis organ.
Dr. McVicker was immediately drawn to the stop 'Flute Pyramidale' which he has only ever seen once before on a rare organ made by the Flemish organ builder Hippolyte Loret, in Notre Dame du Finisterre in Brussels. Loret never worked in England and so big questions remained about who built it and why the stops were in French - people don't 'move' organs. It was all very puzzling but Dr. McVicker commented that it if 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!
Mother Mabel Digby was Superior General of the Society of the Sacred Heart 1895-1911 and she lived in the Mother House on their headquarters site in Paris, as St Madeleine Sophie had done at the time the organ was commissioned. A biography of Mabel Digby by Anne Pollen, has a fascinating account of what happened in Paris in the lead up to their eviction.
Additional detail came to light from the Society's international archives in Rome. It was here we discovered that the statue of Jesus in our cloister garden had been saved from Lille. On 5 February 1904 work had begun to dismantled the seminary organ as the organ from Paris arrived; and the altar in our Lady Chapel, saved from Beauvais, was installed on 29 March 1904.
'The shipment of organs, dismantled, sometimes shipped to the ends of the world, reassembled on the spot by an organ builder, alone trace the planisphere of the Sacred-Coeur's establishments. The organ from the mother house left by the Victoria for San Remo, that of the boarding school in the Rue de Varennes took the train to Budapest, that of the half-boarding school went to England, to Hammersmith that of Conflans, to Argentina, that of Lille to Ixelles....The organ of the Bordeaux house, an instrument built especially for the Sacred Heart by Theodore Puget et Fils (Bordeaux) in 1890, was going to end up in Sydney! It was installed in the chapel at Rose Bay, by Charles Richardson (London 1847-Sydney 1926). The Sydney Organ Journal reports this transfer and also mentions the organ of the house at Marseille hosted in Melbourne'.
French officials sent many letters to the Society demanding that they leave France and also demanding access to the headquarters site in Paris (see the boarding school and its chapel, left) to take an inventory ahead of the property being taken over by the French government. We assume the only purpose of an inventory was to establish what was a fixture that should remain and what was a fitting that the nuns could take with them. The organs on this site are likely to have been considered fixtures to remain.
Mother Mabel Digby was having none of that and she put all the letters in the bin while overseeing the mass packing up of their furniture and larger statues etc. The final summons came on 7 August 1907 making clear that anyone left on their headquarters site would be expelled by force in 4 days time.
On their final day Mother Mabel Digby drew back a sheet covering a sign painted in the wall of the Mother House at the bottom of the garden.
'The Superior General of the Religious of the Sacred Heart, expelled by force from the houses of which she is the legitimate proprietor, and despoiled of the goods which belong to the Congregation, protests with all the power of her soul against this sacrilegious violation of her rights.
She reminds whosoever it may be that shall take possession of this property, that, by the mere fact, he falls under the sentence of major excommunication which cuts him off from the body of the Church, and that absolution from this penalty can be granted to him only by the Pope, after restitution of the goods usurped, and reparation of the harm effected.’
They threw the key in the bushes and left.
Today the majority of the Society's Paris site is occupied by the prestigious Rodin Museum.
It is easy to imagine the Sacred Heart students walking down that long garden (left) as evidenced in the image above. The Mother House at the end still exists but is hidden from view by the trees.
The chapel adjacent to the boarding school, seen earlier above, is now the museum's gift shop. Its roof and two circular stained-glass windows have been lost. At the lower level, small stained-glass windows displaying the Sacred Heart are visible from the outside but boarded up inside.
Following restoration of the organ, the school is keen to welcome members of the public in to join us for organ concerts and recitals in the chapel.
We are also thrilled at the prospect of being able to offer organ lessons to our students and to have organ music once again in the heart of our school.
