A HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX 



we hear of John de John, a foreign organ- 

 maker in London, and from the Subsidy Roll of 

 1549 it is clear that William Tresourer, born 

 in Germany, but at that time living in the 

 parish of Christ Church, Newgate, made 

 organs as well as virginals. The year 1644 

 was a fatal one for organs and for the art of 

 organ-building in this country. On the 

 4 January in that year an ordinance or the 

 Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament 

 was published for the speedy demolishing of 

 organs and other so-called superstitious objects. 

 Very few of the old organs in our cathedrals, 

 collegiate churches, and chapels escaped. 

 Organ-building must have practically ceased 

 in England, and it was not till some fifty or 

 sixty years after the Restoration that organs 

 became common in the parish churches. 78 



To remedy the scarcity of native work- 

 men (Dr. Burney tells us 79 ), ' it was thought 

 expedient to invite foreign builders of 

 known abilities to settle among us ; and the 

 premiums offered on this occasion brought 

 over the two celebrated workmen Smith and 

 Harris.' 



Renatus Harris, the famous organ-builder, 

 and his rival Bernard Schmidt, better known as 

 Father Smith, both lived in the City of London, 

 but John Harris, a son of Renatus, set up in 

 business in Red Lion Street, Holborn. In 

 March 1738 he contracted to build 'a good 

 tuneful and compleat organ ' for the parish 

 church of Doncaster at a cost of 525. He 

 appears to have been in partnership with John 

 Byfield, who married his daughter ; the firm 

 must have enjoyed a great reputation, as they 

 built organs (among others) for Grantham 

 Church, Lincolnshire ; St. Mary RedclifFe, 

 Bristol; and two churches in the City of 

 London, viz., St. Alban's Wood Street, and 

 St. Bartholomew Exchange. Christopher 

 Schrider, who built the organ of Westminster 

 Abbey in 1730, and those of the Chapel Royal, 

 St. James's (1710), St. Mary Abbot's, Ken- 

 sington (1716), and St. Martin in the Fields 

 (1726), probably lived at Westminster. He 

 was a workman employed by Father Smith, 

 whose daughter he married in 1708. He 

 succeeded Smith in his business after the 

 latter's death, and in 1710 became also 

 organ-builder to the Chapels Royal. He died 

 in or before 1754, when his son Christopher 

 held the appointment of king's organ-maker 

 in succession to his father. 80 



78 G. A. Audsley, Art of Organ-building (1905), 



i, 74- 



78 Burney, Hist, of Music (1789), iii, 436. 



80 Edward and John Chamberlayne, Mag. Brit. 

 Notitia (1755), pt. ii, bk. iii, no. 



Richard Bridge, a builder or high re- 

 putation, is said to have been employed as 

 a workman by the younger Harris, and was 

 probably in business in Hand Court, Holborn, 

 in 1748. Nothing further is known of his 

 biography except that he died before 1776. 

 Between 1730 and 1757 or later he built 

 many fine organs for churches in the Metro- 

 polis; among these were St. Paul's Deptford; 

 Christ Church Spitalfields (one of the largest 

 parish church organs in London) ; St. Bar- 

 tholomew the Great ; St. Anne's Limehouse, 

 and the parish churches of Shoreditch and 

 Paddington. 



To meet the great demand for organs which 

 arose early in the 1 8th century, when so many 

 new churches were being erected, and to pre- 

 vent the employment of incompetent persons, 

 the three great makers of that time undertook 

 jointly to supply instruments of good quality at 

 a moderate cost. The makers uniting in this 

 strong combination were Byfield, Jordan, and 

 Bridge, who built the organ for Great Yar- 

 mouth Church in 1733. John Byfield, junior, 

 of whom no personal particulars can be found, 

 has been treated by most writers only as a 

 partner or assistant to his father, but Rim- 

 bault has shown 81 that the younger Byfield 

 was a builder of note on his own account, 

 and gives a list of eighteen organs con- 

 structed by him between 1750 and 1771, 

 including those of St. Botolph's Bishops- 

 gate ; Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin ; St. 

 John's College, Oxford; Drury Lane Theatre; 

 the chapel of Greenwich Hospital; the theatre, 

 Oxford ; and St. Mary's Islington. 



Messrs. William Hill & Son of York Road, 

 Islington, take their origin as a firm from the 

 celebrated John Snetzler, who was one of the 

 most famous of our early English organ builders. 

 He was born at Passau in Germany about 

 1710, and after gaining a reputation in his 

 own country came over to England. Here 

 the excellence of his work and the novelty of 

 some of his methods soon procured him many 

 commissions, and Dr. Rimbault gives a list of 

 thirty-five organs built by him, most of them 

 between 1741 and 1780. Among them were 

 Chesterfield, Derbyshire; Finchley, Edmonton, 

 and Hackney, Middlesex ; St. Mary's Hall ; 

 Beverley Minster; Leatherhead and Richmond, 

 Surrey ; Leeds Parish Church ; St. Martin's 

 Leicester ; St. Clements, Lombard Street ; the 

 German Lutheran Chapel in the Savoy, and 

 Buckingham Palace, the last-named being 

 now in the German Chapel, St. James's. 

 One of his noblest organs was that for King's 



81 Edw. J. Hopkins and F. Rimbault, Hist, of the 

 Organ (1877), 145. 



190 



