I just thought it appropriate to express my great thanks to David Wells Organ Builders for their recent emergency work at Ormskirk.

I arrived at the church on the morning of Sunday 8th September to find a cypher on bottom C of the entire Swell Organ, involving both the 5″ and 10″ chests. On the Ormskirk organ, this is particularly problematic, as I tend to use only the Swell and Unenclosed Choir choruses for the majority of service accompaniment, with the Great reserved for use with large congregations. Additionally, the Enclosed Choir is limited for accompanimental work, being effectively a Solo division without its own manual. A brief inspection under the Swell revealed nothing obvious, so I concluded that whatever was wrong was inside the low pressure chest and not something I could tackle without risking extensive damage; an expert was needed!

As a result, I was obliged to use the Clavinova in the Scarisbrick Chapel for that morning. The bonus was that members of the congregation were commenting, after the service, on how much difference it made, not having the organ available!

A telephone call to DWOB followed on Monday morning to explain my predicament; there would be no finesse in playing, should that situation persist!

Without hesitation, Gordon Blackledge offered to come out to fix the problem by the end of the week, which was followed up by a call from Nigel Huntington shortly afterwards to confirm that agendas had been rearranged and that Gordon would be in in on Friday.

By Friday evening, we were back in business, with the Swell fully operational and the whole instrument tuned. The fault turned out to be not in the chest at all, but rather a fault with the key contact, although why it had happened whilst the instrument wasn’t even being played remains something of a mystery.

I cannot but pay great thanks to the attentive service which we have had since the tuning and maintenance was moved to DWOB, following the death of Keith Edwards, who had kept the organ running for some years previously; minor faults have been corrected at no extra cost and, sometimes, without even being notified!