The Wingfield Organ has arrived at Bradford Cathedral ahead of the Bradford Organist Association’s Organ Spectacular on Saturday 12th November.
The Organ is a reconstruction of a Tudor Organ of the 1530s / 40s.
The new organ is based on a soundboard found at Wingfield church in Suffolk (hence the name). The surviving fragment cannot be dated accurately. There is as yet no possibility of tree-ring dating. It has sliders, and the first reference to stops in an English organ is at Westerham in Kent in 1511/12, where the organ was ‘to be made with iii stoppis after the new making’. It is unlikely to have been made after 1560, or between 1547 and 1553. The 1530s and 1540s seem most likely. The assumption is that this soundboard always lived in this church, and that it was the organ which was seen in 1796, standing on the north side of the chancel. It seems likely that this organ was made by a local builder, from local materials.
Goetze & Gwynn
If you would like to find out more please contact the Bradford Cathedral music department, or you can see it in the Cathedral during our opening hours. More information will be released soon about when it will be used in services. The BOA Organ Spectacular – featuring the Wingfield Organ – takes place on Saturday 12th November 2022 from 10:30am to 5:30pm.