St Luke's Enmore

From SOJ Summer 2006-2007:

The organ was built by Wordsworth and Maskell in 1883. It is one of the few examples of the work of this English builder in Australia.

Notes below prepared by Trevor Bunning from a pamphlet relating to the proposed restoration given to him by the rector (Dec 2008):

The Church of England Parish of Enmore was first dedicated as Christ Church, with the current dedication to St. Luke not until eighty years later in 1963.

The first registered church service was held on Sunday June 20, 1880 in a weatherboard building in Fotheringham Street. The laying of the foundation stone for the current building occurred on Saturday 4 March 1882 and the building opened on 18 June 1882.

The organ at St Luke’s Anglican Church Enmore is believed to be the only Australian example of an instrument built by Wordsworth & Maskell of Leeds UK.

The organ builders Wordsworth & Co. were originally known as Wordsworth & Maskell of Leeds. They built over 160 organs for the northern English counties and over fifty new organs in Leeds. They also exported instruments to India, Newfoundland, Russia, Australia, Canada and the West Indies.

Erection of the organ at Enmore began with its unpacking in the church on Monday 17 December 1883 and was completed on Saturday 22 December 1883. The formal opening took place on 1 January 1884.

The organ is mechanical action, of two manuals each of 56 keys and pedalboard of 30 keys. There are 13 stops. It is contained in a ‘post and rail’ case displaying pipes of the Open Diapason and Dulciana. Some of these pipes bear the inscription “W Hudson decorator. Leeds works England 1883. Wordsworth and Maskell Builder”. The tops of the case posts are fitted with ornate pinnacles; the console has angled stop jambs; key cheeks are of a distinctive, scrolled profile and the bellows weights have the initials ‘W&M’ cast in.

The church proposes to restore the organ and to replace some unoriginal pipework to bring it back to its original specification. The organ is essentially in original condition, having had very little work done to it since its installation. Some partial restoration work was carried out c.1975. At some time the Great Fifteenth was replaced by a tenor C compass Clarionet. Unfortunately the organ was vandalized in 1983 when quite a number of Clarionet pipes were removed or broken. The façade pipes were originally diapered but have been painted over at a later date. Some of the original diapering may still be seen. Currently the organ is used for Sunday services, choir practice, and occasional recitals. Having a reliable heritage organ will ensure the continuation of its presence in the church and wider community.

This splendid Wordsworth & Maskell organ, restored by the Jewkes firm in 2011, was of course originally hand-blown from within the organ chamber. A noisy external electric blower was added in the earlier 20th century, and replaced in 1994 by an English blower donated to the church by St Mary's Waverley, when their own instrument was re-constructed by the Jewkes firm. Though having given good service to 2 different instruments since c.1962, this blower's motor had been re-wound badly at some stage, and its slightly exposed position near the console at Enmore resulted in distractingly noisy operation, so it had been intended for some time to replace it with a brand new machine. As funds were not avaiable for this work at the time of the organ's restoration, the old blower remained in situ, but thanks to the enthusiasm and efforts of the parish organists, clergy and others, a new silent German blower has been installed. In a serendipitous moment shortly after the blower's connection, the Rector entered the church and asked if he might hear it turned on, to which the amused Jewkes staff were able to inform him that in fact it was turned on!

St Luke’s Anglican Church, Enmore, NSW

Historical and Technical Documentation by Kelvin Hastie
© OHTA (last updated June 2011)

The below material first published in OHTA News April 2011

St Luke’s Anglican Church, in the inner-city Sydney suburb of Enmore, is home to the only organ in Australia confirmed as being built by the Leeds partnership of Wordsworth & Maskell. The church – formerly known as Christ Church – acquired the instrument in 1883 and Rushworth records that it was installed by the Layton Bros, of Newtown, in the short time of six days. It was opened on New Year’s Day, 1884.¹
In 1981 John Stiller documented the organ on behalf of OHTA. His statement of historic significance and comparative importance was as follows:

Over the years the instrument has received heavy use and has been altered visually, mechanically and tonally in a number of ways. Sadly, it also has been the subject of vandalism. In 1975 a partial restoration was undertaken by Anthony Welby of Sydney, but this was heavily restricted and involved the introduction of some synthetic materials (such as nylon buttons) to the action and the rebuilding of the pedalboard. The alterations to the organ are listed below:

1. At the same time as Welby’s work the façade pipes were painted over, a pencil inscription on the back of case pipe reading “Redecorated by Paul Wilson & Fabian LoSchiavo January 1975 Parishioners”. Above this (and also on an adjacent case pipe) is another pencil inscription dating from 1883 and reading “W. Hudson, Decorator”.

2. Research by organist and OHTA member, Kathy Drummond, has revealed that the tremulant was installed by Richardson in 1894.

3. The original Great Fifteenth 2ft was removed (probably around 1930) and replaced by a Clarionet 8ft.

4. Vandals stole a significant amount of pipework in the period before the OHTA documentation, Stiller noting the loss of the following pipework from the Great: Open Diapason – 7 pipes, Gamba – 3 pipes, Dulciana – 12 pipes, Principal – 16 pipes, Harmonic Flute – 12 pipes and Clarionet – 18 pipes. While missing flue pipes were replaced by Peter D.G. Jewkes in the 1980s, further damage has been sustained in more recent times.

5. The organ has been provided with a number of blowers, the most recent dating from 1966. Originally supplied to St Mary’s Waverley, it was installed at Enmore by Peter D.G. Jewkes in 1987.

By the 1990s the Wordsworth & Maskell organ was in a poor state of repair and, as a result, the church opted in 1995 to purchase a redundant hybrid electronic organ from St Paul’s Anglican Church, Burwood, following the return to use of the Davidson organ at that church.

While there had been much talk of restoring the pipe organ, a plan of action was not put in place until 2007 when organist Kathy Drummond, together with The Revd Gwilym Henry-Edwards (Rector of St Luke’s), spearheaded the present project. Fund raising commenced, an OHTA tax-deductible appeal was established and an application for a grant was submitted to the NSW Heritage Office. In May 2009 the Minister for Planning announced that St Luke’s had been awarded $30,000. While this was less than envisaged, the grant nonetheless eased the financial burden that a full restoration would have placed on the financial resources of the parish.

In order to secure the grant, a statement of significance and conservation plan had to be developed and the endorsement of the heritage adviser to Marrickville Council had to be received. The church approached the author to be its heritage adviser and to certify the work as it proceeded. The quotation of Peter D.G. Jewkes Pty Ltd, dating from October 2007, was accepted and work commenced in late 2009.

The instrument was completely dismantled and removed to the firm’s Ermington works and this allowed the church to renovate the organ chamber, including the rebuilding of the floor, which had started to subside.

A summary of the work carried out by Peter D.G. Jewkes follows:

1. All soundboards, windchests, action, bellows, console equipment and manual pipework were stripped down, as appropriate, preparatory to restoration.

2. Manual and pedal soundboards were opened up, the channels grouted and sealed with traditional hot compound, the pallets taken out, stripped of old leather and completely re-covered with best quality double-layered sheepskin, with new plated steel pallet springs and pulldown wires inserted throughout. Soundboard tables were screwed where loosened from grids. Upperboards and slides of soundboards were removed and trued up to ensure proper fitting; tables, slides and the undersides of upperboards were polished with graphite. Tables were planed true and splits pegged where necessary. Secondary actions of Swell and Great soundboards were restored.

3. Existing pipework was restored in order to preserve its tonal characteristics, with all pipes thoroughly overhauled and cleaned, metal pipes being rounded out and repaired where damaged; stoppers of wood pipes were greased and re-packed where necessary. The Swell Hautbois pipes were completely dismantled and cleaned then re-assembled - each reed pipe received meticulous attention to ensure prompt and even speech, preserving the original tone. New phosphor-bronze tuning wires were fitted. Every pipe received careful individual attention on the voicing machine and severely damaged pipes were sent to Melbourne pipe-makers for specialist attention and re-making where necessary. The Lieblich Gedact pipes were also sent to the Melbourne pipemakers for rebuilding. Because of the unavailability of cork of acceptable quality, perished cork ‘bung’ tuning stoppers had to be replaced with new spotted metal felted tuning canisters, to ensure tuning stability. This process was also applied to the stopped bottom octave of the Harmonic Flute. The existing pitch (measured by Stiller as A=446.5 Hz at 19 degrees Celsius) was retained and new tuning slides were fitted where necessary. After reinstallation of the organ at Enmore the pipework was carefully regulated and fine-tuned.

4. The remnants of the heavily damaged and non-original Clarionet were discarded and, after some discussion, it was decided to replace the rank with a new Mixture II ranks, rather than a new Fifteenth 2ft. A grooved veneer board was placed over the upperboard to convey wind to the new stop, scaled and voiced in 19th century style, the composition being 15.19 from bottom C to tenor F# and 12.15 from Tenor G to the top of the compass.

5. The non-original (and inefficient) tremulant was removed and replaced by a new unit.

6. Pedal coupler pull-down trackers were restored and re-wired for efficient operation. Nylon terminal buttons were discarded where accessible and replaced with traditional leather buttons and red cloth washers. The keyboards were cleaned and refelted. The drawstop jambs and other fitments were re-furbished, overhauled and the knobs polished. The composition pedal bearings were lubricated and adjusted and the blocks re-set for correct drawstop movement.

7. The Pedalboard was dismantled, re-felted and restored.

8. The bellows was fully restored: the well was repainted and sealed inside and out, all access panels were re-bedded with lambskin. The bellows was re-covered with best quality lambskin in the traditional manner. The bellows weights were repainted.

9. The blower cabinet was rebuilt and relined.

10. The Swell shutters were painted, re-fitted and felted as required, to obtain the maximum crescendo and diminuendo, and adjustments made to secure freedom of movement. All centres on louvres and connection rods were lubricated and worn centres replaced. Existing painted surfaces were repainted as original. Internal surfaces were restored and repainted. The building frame was cleaned and repainted using carefully matched authentic colouring.

11. The casework was cleaned and wax polished by specialist restorer, Peter Clarke, while console interior panels (including stop jambs, music desk and knee panels) were repolished in Japan Black, as original. Acrylic lacquer applied to timber surfaces in the 1970s was stripped away to allow for the restoration of the original finishes.

12. Façade pipes were cleaned and ten damaged tuning scrolls were resoldered and restored. The last pipe in the left of the façade has been stripped to show the underlying stencilled patterning.

13. While it had originally been envisaged that the builder’s plate, divisional labels and stopknob domes would be cleaned and re-inked, this proved to be unviable, owing to the thinness of the ivories. As a result only the heavily-faded builder’s plate (attached to the impost rail) was retained, all other labels being remade and hand-engraved by Anthony Rochester, of Newcastle, UK. Meticulous care was exercised in copying the exact layout, size and script style of the original labels, although the original misspelling of Piccolo (“Picolo”) was not replicated. The misspelling of the non-original Tremulant label (“Tremulent”) was likewise not replicated. The original labels are archived within the instrument.

The instrument was returned to the church in late 2010 and the mechanical and tonal finishing completed in March 2011. The instrument has been resuscitated as a musically-satisfying and mechanically-viable musical instrument, with distinctive tonal and mechanical features. These include the ingenious use of iron components in the key, stop and combination actions, notably in the pivoted iron arms that allow for angled stop jambs. While the instrument’s pipework has taken a battering over the years, the voicing and regulation skills of the Jewkes firm has enabled even those ranks with a significant amount of replacement pipework to speak evenly and in tonal balance with the surviving pipework.

The instrument was re-opened in a recital on 19 June 2011. Its specification is:

Compass 56/30
Hitch-down Swell Pedal
Mechanical key and stop action
3 composition pedals each to Great and Swell

* Common bass with Stopped Diapason
+ New 2011 (Peter Jewkes) - in place of a Clarionet 8' which had been added and was badly damaged
# Common bass with Lieblich Gedact

Built by Wordsworth and Maskell of Leeds, UK in 1883
Erected by Layton Bros. of Newtown in 1884
Restored (Stage 1) by Peter D G Jewkes in 2011.

1 Graeme D. Rushworth, Historic Organs of New South Wales: the instruments, their makers and players, 1791-1940. Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1988, p.357

2 John Stiller, St Luke’s Anglican Church Enmore NSW. Documentation of Pipe Organ built by Wordsworth & Maskell, 1883. Camberwell, Vic.:Organ Historical Trust of Australia, 1981, p.3

The second part of the restoration (information supplied by the church's organist, Miss Kathy Drummond (8/12/19):

Members of both the parish and OHTA contributed funds for the second stage of the project over the years since the completion of Stage I and in 2017 a very generous anonymous donation was received to complete the sum required. Quotes had been obtained for the rediapering of the façade pipes and a contract signed for the work by Mr Lyell Rosenzweig of Tanunda, South Australia. Dr Kelvin Hastie, consultant and Mr Peter Jewkes, Organ Builder were in support of this decision. Lyell's rediapering of the façade pipes of the Hill & Son organ situated in the Barossa Regional Gallery (ex Adelaide Town Hall) is of excellent quality.

To transport the pipes, timber crates were custom built. They were first sent to Mr Tim Gilley in Melbourne to be repaired (dents removed) and cleaned, then over to Tanunda where the rediapering process began.

First the two layers of paint, one each of silver and beige were scraped off by hand to reveal the original designs. The pipes were originally painted 'free-hand' so that the overall effect was not symmetrical. After consultation with Kelvin and Peter it was decided that stencils should be made of the original decorative work rather than replicate the 'unevenness'. The pipes were then prepared and the paint matched to the original colours with 24 karat gold leaf used where required.

The pipes were reinstalled and tuned on Saturday 25 August 2018, ready for service on Sunday 9 September when they were blessed during the morning Eucharist by Bishop Richard Hurford.

Photos below taken before restoration. Post-restoration photos are further down the page.





Photo: Rodney Ford (May 2010)

Photos above: Kathy Drummond (Organist 2006)

Photos above: Trevor Bunning (Dec 2008)

Post-restoration photos

St Luke's, Enmore - Swell stop combination action (photo: K Hastie)

St Luke's, Enmore - manual key actions (photo: K Hastie)

St Luke's, Enmore - restored Swell pipework (photo: K Hastie)

St Luke's, Enmore (photos: Trevor Bunning [October 2018])

St Luke's, Enmore (photo: K Hastie)

From the Sydney Organ Journal, Spring 2011:

The Organ at St Luke's Anglican Church, Enmore

Kelvin Hastie OAM

The restoration of historic instruments has been a feature of the organ scene in New South Wales for over thirty years now, with more than 125 instruments either fully or substantially restored according to guidelines established by the Organ Historical Trust of Australia and most recently published as NSW Heritage: The Pipe Organ Conservation and Maintenance Guide (NSW Heritage Office and OHTA, 1998). This remarkable achievement could not have taken place without skilled organ builders and financial support provided by the NSW Department of Planning through its various grants program and by OHTA through its documentation work and tax-deductible scheme.

On Sunday 19 June 2011 the 1883 Wordsworth & Maskell at St Luke's Anglican Church, Enmore, was reopened after restoration by Peter D.G. Jewkes Pty Ltd in a recital played by Peter Jewkes, with church organists Kathy Drummond and Michael Davies also performing. On this occasion a 52-page booklet entitled "A History of the Wordsworth & Maskell Pipe Organ of 1883", written by Kathy Drummond was made available. This gives a full account of the history of the instrument and those who have played it. (See a review and purchase details elsewhere in this journal).

In 2008 St Luke's appointed me as organ consultant and in this role I advised the church in its application for financial assistance through both the NSW Department of Planning (which granted $30,000 in April 2009) and the Organ Historical Trust of Australia (which provided a tax-deductible appeal). OHTA Vice-Chairman, Hugh Knight wrote the following statement of significance on behalf of the Trust in November 2008, and this was used to support the grant application. Extracts from Hugh's statement are printed below:

"The Organ Historical Trust of Australia believes the pipe organ of St Luke's Anglican Church Enmore to be of outstanding historic value and of national significance on account of its rarity - it is the only example of an instrument sent to Australia by the nineteenth century English organ building partnership, Wordsworth & Maskell, of Leeds.

The organ was built in 1883 and Graeme Rushworth records that the Layton Bros., of Newtown, installed it in six days, ready for use in December of that year. The organ was renovated in 1975 by Anthony Welby of Sydney, although this work was restricted in nature, owing to a lack of funds.

The organ was documented in 1981 by John Stiller who noted in his statement of significance that the Enmore organ was "a unique example in Australia of a small nineteenth century organ building firm. Its tonal design indicates pronounced late Romantic tendency, and the instrument is in a remarkably good state of preservation".

The organ is still maintained and in use, but is heavily worn and not all sections are usable, owing to the dilapidated state of some of the pipes. Although the pipe work - as a corpus - remains in highly original condition, at some stage the Great Fifteenth 2' was replaced by a Clarionet. In 1980 vandals stole a number of pipes from ranks on the Great division, notably from the Dulciana, Principal and Harmonic Flute. These were replaced by facsimiles by Peter D.G. Jewkes Pty. Ltd, although missing pipes from the unoriginal Clarionet were not reinstated.

The only other alterations to the organ have been the replacement of the original straight pedal board with one of concave-radiating design, and the removal of the hand blowing apparatus to allow electric blowing.

The organ is significant for its mechanical quality, using excellent materials which make it eminently viable as a musical instrument well into the future. Iron components, obtained from foundries for which Leeds was famous, are used extensively in the organ's action and have been preserved in an almost-new condition by blacking. It is also significant for its outstanding tonal qualities, its flutes and diapasons being especially noteworthy.

Wordsworth & Maskell became Wood, Wordsworth & Co. in the twentieth century, and recently changed its name to Peter Wood & Co., now located in Harrogate. This latter firm supplied a second-hand Wilkinson organ to St Martin's Anglican Church, Killara, NSW, in 2007."

Work to restore the Enmore organ commenced in late 2009 and the instrument was completely dismantled and removed to the firm's Ermington works and this allowed the church to renovate the organ chamber, including the rebuilding of the floor, which had started to subside.

A summary of the work carried out by Peter D.G. Jewkes Pty Ltd follows:

1. All soundboards, windchests, action, bellows, console equipment and manual pipe work were stripped down, as appropriate, preparatory to restoration.

2. Manual and pedal soundboards were opened up, the channels grouted and sealed with traditional hot compound, the pallets taken out, stripped of old leather and completely re-covered with best quality double-layered sheepskin, with new plated steel pallet springs and pulldown wires inserted throughout. Soundboard tables were screwed where loosened from grids. Upper boards and slides of soundboards were removed and trued up to ensure proper fitting; tables, slides and the undersides of upper boards were polished with graphite. Tables were planed true and splits pegged where necessary. Secondary actions of Swell and Great soundboards were restored.

3. Existing pipe work was restored in order to preserve its tonal characteristics, with all pipes thoroughly overhauled and cleaned, metal pipes being rounded out and repaired where damaged; stoppers of wood pipes were greased and re-packed where necessary. The Swell Hautbois pipes were completely dismantled and cleaned then re-assembled - each reed pipe received meticulous attention to ensure prompt and even speech, preserving the original tone. New phosphor-bronze tuning wires were fitted. Every pipe received careful individual attention on the voicing machine and severely damaged pipes were sent to Melbourne pipe-makers for specialist attention and re-making where necessary. The Lieblich Gedact pipes were also sent to the Melbourne pipe-makers for rebuilding. Because of the unavailability of cork of acceptable quality, perished cork "bung" tuning stoppers had to be replaced with new spotted metal felted tuning canisters, to ensure tuning stability. This process was also applied to the stopped bottom octave of the Harmonic Flute. The existing pitch (measured by Stiller as A= 446.5 Hz at 19 degrees Celsius) was retained and new tuning slides were fitted where necessary. After reinstallation of the organ at Enmore the pipe work was carefully regulated and fine-tuned.

4. The remnants of the heavily damaged and non-original Clarionet were discarded and, after some discussion, it was decided to replace the rank with a new Mixture II ranks, rather than a new Fifteenth 2'. A grooved veneer board was placed over the upper board to convey wind to the new stop, scaled and voiced in nineteenth-century style, the composition being 15.19 from bottom C to tenor F# and 12.15 from Tenor G to the top of the compass.

5. The non-original (and inefficient) tremulant was removed and replaced by a new unit.

6. Pedal coupler pull-down trackers were restored and re-wired for efficient operation. Nylon terminal buttons were discarded where accessible and replaced with traditional leather buttons and red cloth washers. The keyboards were cleaned and re-felted. The drawstop jambs and other fittings were re-furbished, overhauled and the knobs polished. The composition pedal bearings were lubricated and adjusted and the blocks re-set for correct drawstop movement.

7. The Pedal board was dismantled, re-felted and restored.

8. The bellows was fully restored: the well was repainted and sealed inside and out, all access panels were re-bedded with lambskin. The bellows was re-covered with best quality lambskin in the traditional manner. The bellows weights were repainted.

9. The blower cabinet was rebuilt and relined.

10. The Swell shutters were painted, re-fitted and felted as required, to obtain the maximum crescendo and diminuendo, and adjustments made to secure freedom of movement. All centres on louvres and connection rods were lubricated and worn centres replaced. Existing painted surfaces were repainted as original. Internal surfaces were restored and repainted. The building frame was cleaned and repainted using carefully matched authentic colouring.

11. The casework was cleaned and wax polished by specialist restorer, Peter Clarke, while console interior panels (including stop jambs, music desk and knee panels) were repolished in Japan Black, as original. Acrylic lacquer applied to timber surfaces in the 1970s was stripped away to allow for the restoration of the original finishes.

12. Façade pipes were cleaned and ten damaged tuning scrolls were resoldered and restored. (The last pipe in the left of the façade has been stripped to show the underlying stencilled patterning). Owing to cost restraints, the re-stencilling of the façade could not be accommodated in the present project, but it is hoped that this important visual element can be attended to in the near future.

13. While it had originally been envisaged that the builder's plate, divisional labels and stop knob domes would be cleaned and re-inked, this proved to be unviable, owing to the thinness of the ivories. As a result only the heavily-faded builder's plate (attached to the impost rail) was retained, all other labels being remade and hand-engraved in the UK.

The instrument was returned to the church in late 2010 and the mechanical and tonal finishing completed in March 2011. It is essential to place on record a note of deep gratitude to Kathy Drummond, church organist, whose efforts in spearheading the project, publicising it in the local community and in fund raising have been truly remarkable. She has been supported in her worthy endeavours by all at St Luke's, most notably the Rector, The Revd Gwilym Henry-Edwards. Members of the Jewkes team involved in the restoration were: Murray Allen, Cliff Bingham, Robyn Downham (office manager), Rodney Ford, Peter Jewkes, David Morrison, Kornelius Schmidt and Martin Smith.

The specification of the organ is:

Great
Open Diapason
Stop'd Diapason
Dulciana
Gamba
Principal
Harmonic Flute
Mixture 12.15

Swell
Open Diapason
Lieblich Gedact
Keraulophon
Principal
Harmonic Piccolo
Hautbois
Tremulant

Pedal
Bourdon

Couplers
Swell to Great
Swell to Pedal
Great to Pedal

8 ft
8 ft
8 ft
8 ft
4 ft
4 ft
II ranks

8 ft
8 ft
8 ft
4 ft
2 ft
8 ft

16 ft

56 pipes
56 pipes
56 pipes
44 pipes *
44 pipes *
56 pipes
112 pipes +

56 pipes
56 pipes
44 pipes #
56 pipes
56 pipes
56 pipes

30 pipes

References
Rushworth, G.D., Historic Organs of New South Wales (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger 1988), 357.
Stiller, J., "St Luke's Anglican Church, Enmore, NSW. Documentation of PipeOrgan built by Wordsworth & Maskell, 1883". Organ Historical Trust of Australia and Heritage Council of NSW, 1981.
Maidment, John. Gazetteer of Victorian Pipe Organs. Melbourne: Organ Historical Trust of Australia, 2008. (see www.ohta.org.au)