By Alan Roberts

The third annual Southern Counties Organ Festival was held at Twyford Waterworks Museum in Hampshire on the 4th of June. Set in rolling countryside just a couple of miles from the M3 motorway, the museum itself holds a fascinating history of potable water pumping, filtration and supply to the surrounding area. Indeed, part of the Victorian building is still used by Southern Water.

There were, in total, some 27 organs of varying size attending; from the tiny ‘Babe’ built and presented by Paul McCarthy (who incidentally nearly got paid a mileage allowance, as he kept going around the building trying to find a pitch!) to Ray Bryant’s 69 keyless WurliTzer system Dean “Charlotte Rose”, now recently tuned and fully at home in it’s new transport. The main body of organs were (in programme order):

Wilhelm Bruder model 74 (actually an ex demonstration model) owned by Francis Stapleton, which had been completely rebuilt by Richard Dean last year; a beautiful 56 keyless Voigt belonging to Paul Kirrage that came originally from a German showman; “De Angelina” a 55 keyless David Leach Dutch street organ built at the extreme end of 1999 owned by the very young but nontheless enthusiastic Ashley Spencer; the 54 keyless McCarthy “Broadtown Belle” owned by Mike Harris, also in new transport; a 52 key Verbeeck Dutch street organ built in 1982 and owned by Glyn and Mary Tisdall; “De Harlequin”, a 52 key street organ that started life as a Keonigsberg, rebuilt by Theo Heesbeen in 1989, then pipework replaced in 2004, owned by Graham Spencer; A colourful Wilhelm Bruder model 79 (48 keyless) organ owned by Dr Andrew Leach; “Irene”, a 42 keyless McCarthy owned by Cliff Seamark; “Bayford Belle”, a 38 note David Leach hand turned organ, owned by Ray Bryant; the 36 key Pluer/ Krull Dutch street organ “De Kliene Molen”, owned by Ashley Spencer; Dave and Joan Wright had their lovely Hopp hand turned organ actually inside the building right next to the triple expansion steam pumping engine...which thankfully was not working! In these acoustics, the Hopp sounded much larger.

The smaller type of organ was represented by Andy Hinds, who attended with his 31 note Alan Pell paper roll instrument; Robin Brailey brought along his 30 keyless Dean “Cindy”; whilst Dave Deakin had an example of an Alan Pell 25 note paper roll organ on display; Dave Heritage and his Lady wife came from Banbury to present their 22 keyless McCarthy, and that young man, Ashley Spencer, gets yet another mention with his John Smith organ “Classica”.

Whilst still with this lucky young man, it is worth mentioning that he also presented something a little different, namely a Williams MP3 player built to look (and sound) like a small hand turned organ. It was the creation of Nick Williams of Ludlow, Shrops. It should be noted that Ashley is just ten years old!

To round off the instruments at Twyford, we must make mention of the collections owned and presented by Norman and Jane Dicker, and also of Brian and Joan Chapman. These hand turned, table top machines held quite a few people for some considerable time, such was their diversity.

The waterworks museum had laid on a free shuttle bus service to and from Winchester railway station, and this proved to be very popular, bringing in many folk (one even came from America to see the show, but not all the way on the bus, I might add).

Fortunately, the weather behaved itself, and produced a very fine, hot and dry summers day. The latter was to prove trying for several instruments; as the relative humidity dropped they became more temperamental, and a couple even gave up altogether. Nevertheless, a great time was had by all.

I should like to finish by saying that Johnathon and Helmut Eckhardt (who produce the official GDSF video and DVD) came along and filmed the whole event; They will be producing both a video and dvd of Twyford 2006 in due course.

Finally, a big ‘thank you’ to the museum and it’s volounteer staff for having us all there.

Both Graham Spencer and myself as co-organisers would like to thank all the organ owners and their helpers who came to support this growing event.