Brindley & Foster
Brindley & Foster was a pipe organ builder based in Sheffield who flourished between 1854 and 1939.[1]
Background
The business was established by Charles Brindley in 1854. He was joined by Albert Healey Foster in 1871 and the company acquired the name Brindley & Foster.
Charles Brindley was born in Baslow in the early 1830s. He retired in 1887 and died in 1893.
Brindley was a follower of Edmund Schulze. He built solid instruments with powerful choruses using Vogler’s Simplification system. Pipes placed in chromatic order on the soundboards allowed for a simple and reliable key action and permitted similar stops to share the same bass, keeping both space and cost to a minimum. The Swell organ was often mounted above the Great in the German manner.
After the partnership with Foster they began to manufacture more complex pneumatic mechanisms for stop combinations; he also concentrated on the production of orchestral effects.
The business of Brindley and Foster was bought by Willis in 1939.
List of new organs
- Holy Trinity, Ashby-de-la-Zouch 1867
- All Saints' Church, Oakham 1872
- St. Mary's Church, Arnold 1876
- St John's Church, Ranmoor, Sheffield 1877 - destroyed by fire 1887
- Worksop Priory 1879
- Saint Mark's Anglican, Alexandria, Egypt 1883
- St John's Church, Ranmoor, Sheffield 1888
- Lesmahagow Old Parish Church 1889
- Durban City Hall, Durban, South Africa, 1894
- St. Mary's Wesleyan Methodist Church, Truro 1895
- Holy Sepulchre Anglican Church, Grafton, Auckland, New Zealand 1896 (rebuilt with new slider soundboards by Norman & Beard 1913, but remains tonally the same.)
- St. John's Church, Worksop 1896
- St Mary's Church, Wirksworth 1899
- St. Mark's Church, Mansfield 1900
- Pietermaritzburg City Hall, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, 1901 - one of the largest pipe organ in the Southern Hemisphere
- Chalmers' Presbyterian Church, Timaru, New Zealand 1903
- St Mary Lowgate, Kingston upon Hull 1904
- Holy Trinity Church, Lenton 1906
- Toxteth Unitarian Chapel 1906
- St. Anne's Church, Moseley 1907
- Christ Church, Chester 1909
- St Paul and St John the Evangelist, Monklands, Airdrie, Scotland – Installed & dedicated 1911 and the only addition made to the original design, was the addition of a Tremolo Stop at some point. The instrument was restored in 1998,and is in original condition and retaining the original hand pump, which can still be used today if there is a power cut!!
- [[Anglican Church in Niteroi- Brazil, 1925 opus 2714, now at Saint Inacio de Loiola Parish, in Sao Paulo- Brazil. This is the only Brindley organ in Americas
List of works of restorations and renovations
References
- ^ Pipes & Actions. Laurence Elvin. 1995