Music in Stoke Minster

The Organ

No details exist of the organ installed in the present church when it was built in 1830. However we do know that Wadsworths of Manchester provided a new instrument in 1872, at a cost of £285. It was a three-manual organ with tracker action, but the stop list does not survive.

The present organ was built in 1899 by James Jepsom Binns of Bramley, Leeds. It was commissioned by master potter Henry J. Johnson for his home at Oulton, near Stone. He later moved to Westwood Hall, Leek (now Westwood College), and the organ was installed in his music room there. The organ had four manuals and pedals; the fourth manual, ‘Solo and Echo’, when at Stone, was sited in a separate room. In Westwood Hall, a row of pipes high up to the right of the main organ case, suggests that the division was housed there.

A keen amateur organist, Henry Johnson ran a series of recitals at Leek given by some of the leading recitalists of the day, and local organists were invited to attend. However, after the loss of relatives in World War I, Johnson generously donated the organ to St Peter’s Church. A memorial plaque on the organ case records that "this organ was given by H.J. Johnson, Nov.25th 1921, in memory of Capt. Reginald Tavernor Johnson and Lieut Charles Challinor Watson who were killed in the Great War 1914-1918. Erected by public subscrition."

The organ was erected in St Peter’s in 1921. Standing on the west gallery, it now had all divisions within the main case. Here it did service for the next fifty years. Click here to see the 1921 specification.

Over the years, the condition of the organ deteriorated so that a complete rebuilding was necessary. The work was entrusted to J.W. Walker & Sons, and was completed in 1972. The organ was reduced from four manuals to three, but with a much more complete specification through the removal of some of the duplicated stops on the original Binns instrument, which allowed for the development of proper choruses on all divisions.

The action was converted to electro-pneumatic, with a new detached console being sited on the north gallery, overlooking the front of the nave. Click here to see the 1972 specification.

The organ is now in the care of Gary Owens of GO Organ Builders Liverpool.

The Binns organ in Henry Johnson’s music room at Westwood Hall, prior to 1921.

The 1972 Walker console

Carvings on the organ case are a clue to the organ’s secular past.

Carvings on the organ case are a clue to the organ’s secular past.

Sharing God's Love In Stoke