St Luke’s Organ

The pipe organ situ­ated in Christ Church, now St Luke’s, is by Wordsworth and Maskell of Leeds, UK. It is the only example of the build­ers’ work in Aus­tralia and is there­fore of nation­al sig­ni­fic­ance and is now a her­it­age-lis­ted item. 

The instru­ment was built in 1883 in Leeds and after being trans­por­ted to Sydney was erec­ted by loc­al organ build­ers, Layton Broth­ers of New­town. It was opened on 4 Janu­ary 1884.

The organ was restored to full work­ing order in 2011 fol­low­ing grants from the Her­it­age Coun­cil of New South Wales and Mar­rick­ville Coun­cil. A tax-deduct­ible fund was set up and man­aged by OHTA (Organ His­tor­ic­al Trust of Aus­tralia). Dr Kelvin Hast­ie, OAM was appoin­ted con­sult­ant for the res­tor­a­tion with Kathy Drum­mond the pro­ject manager.

The second stage of the res­tor­a­tion involved redi­aper­ing of the 31 façade pipes. The pat­terns on the pipes had pre­vi­ously been painted over to blend in with the church walls. They were restored to their ori­gin­al dec­or­a­tions by Lyell Rosen­z­weig of Tanunda (SA) and rein­stalled in the organ in 2018.

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The spe­cific­a­tion of the organ is: 

Great:

Open Diapason 8 ft (56 pipes)

Stop’d Diapason 8 ft (56 pipes)

Gamba 8 ft (44 pipes) *

Dul­ciana (44 pipes) *

Prin­cip­al 4 ft (56 pipes)

Har­mon­ic Flute (56 pipes)

Mix­ture II ranks (112 pipes) +

Swell

Open Diapason 8 ft (56 pipes)

Lieb­lich Gedact 8 ft (56 pipes)

Ker­aulo­phon 8 ft (44 pipes) #

Prin­cip­al 4 ft (56 pipes)

Har­mon­ic Pic­colo 2 ft (56 pipes)

Haut­bois 8 ft (56 pipes)

Trem­u­lant

Ped­al

Bour­don 16 ft (30 pipes)

Couplers

Swell to Great

Great to Pedals

Swell to Pedals

Com­pass 56/30

Hitch-down Swell Pedal

Mech­an­ic­al action throughout

Three com­pos­i­tion ped­als each to Great and Swell

* Com­mon bass with Stopped Diapason

+ New 2010

# Com­mon bass with Lieb­lich Gedact”

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A more in depth his­tory of the organ, organ build­ers, organ­ists and organ blowers may be found in 

A His­tory of the His­tor­ic Wordsworth & Maskell Pipe Organ of 1883 St Luke’s Anglic­an Church Enmore. NSW pub­lished on the occa­sion of the com­ple­tion of the res­tor­a­tion 2018. 

The book, avail­able from St Luke’s Church Office ($15), includes a short his­tory of the church.

© Kath­ryn R Drum­mond & St Luke’s Anglic­an Church, Enmore. NSW Aus­tralia. 2018