Church of the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church
Carcoar

[c.1890?] Alfred Kirkland, London. 1m., 4 sp.st., pedal pulldowns, tr., hand-blown





© PdL 2006

From 1990 OHTA Conference booklet:

In Historic Organs of New South Wales, Graeme Rushworth devotes a whole section (pp. 302-303) to the builder Alfred Kirkland, whose only surviving Australian organ survives in this Catholic Church. Another example of Kirkland's work was installed at Wesley Church, Albany, Western Australia, but this was replaced by another organ and put into storage.

Rushworth states that the organ was opened at services held on 26 July, 1891, with organist, clergy and choir travelling from both Bathurst and Orange. Whilst the name of Kirkland is not well-kown in this country, the firm was of sufficient size to take over Henry Bevington in 1893 but in 1923, four years before the death of Kirkland, the business was absorbed by Wm. Hill & Son and Norman & Beard.

John Stiller documented the Carcoar organ in 1894 and made the following comments:

Original features present in this organ include:

1. the case, complete with display pipes decorated in a modest style;

2. many console fittings, such as stop heads, keyboard, keyboard cheeks, nameplate of builder, and nameplate of agents;

3. a double-rise bellows and a partly operational hand-blowing apparatus;

4. responsive mechanical key and stop actions;

5. all original pipework, featuring pungent and strong principals contrasted with delicate gedacts.

General condition: The piepwrok is extremely dusty and has been badly damaged by careless cone-tuning... The soundboard has murmurs and bad "runnings", and all original stop labels have disappeared from the console.

As with the organ of St Paul's, Carcoar, this small instrument, after restoration, would complement the other items of heritage in this unique rural village.

The specification is:

Manual Open Diapason Stopped Diapason (Treble) Stopped Diapason (Bass) Principal Flute

8 8 8 4 4

*

Pedal permanently coupled to manual

* has an odd stop label "Dulciana"

Compass 56/30
Mechanical action
Wind pressure 72mm

Photo: TB