St Alban's Five Dock

From SOJ February/March 1988

The organ in this church is of mixed vintage and at this stage its construction cannot be attributed to any one builder. [Ian Brown wrote to the Society (14/3/16) saying that Sid Noad had told him the organ was built by F H Baker for St Matthew's, Manly.] It was originally installed in St Matthew' s Anglican Church, Manly, and transferred to Five Dock in 1930 when Manly purchased a much larger three manual organ from Frederick Taylor of Melbourne. Subsequent renovation work was undertaken in 1959 and in 1969 the pitch was altered by S. T. Noad & Son . In May, 1981 John Stiller carried out a Standard Documentation of the organ for the Organ Historical Trust of Australia and made the following comments:

"The original builder of the organ is not known with any degree of certainty. A great deal of the metal pipework is of Fincham manufacture and the other three ranks of pipes were probably made by William Davidson (Swell Bourdon, Stopped Diapason and Pedal Bourdon). It is possible that this organ has been built using secondhand material ... The organ contains a great deal of historic material which reflects the style of various organbuilders:

1. The case contains examples of the style of Hill & Son (display pipemouths) and Fincham (moulding profile of impost casework).
2. The console contains many old fittings such as keyboards, keyboard
cheeks, composition pedals and swell shutter control.
3. The double-rise bellows has been retained.
4. The mechanical key, stop and combination actions for the manual divisions have been preserved. The Great key action has a double-sided rollerboard which is generally a Fincham characteristic of the period about 1875.
5. As already mentioned the pipework displays an interesting diversity of styles.

Various alterations which have been made to this organ include:

1. The addition of tuning slides to all open metal pipework;
2. The substitution of several stopknobs and stop labels;
3. The replacement of the original pedalboard by one of concave and radiating design;
4. Removal of the hand-blowing apparatus;
5. Enlargement of the compass of the Pedal division;
6. The possible addition of a tremulant."

The specification of the organ is: