Alexandra Palace Organ

London N22 4AY

The unofficial website

THE STORY SO FAR

1873 Alexandra Palace was built as North London's answer to the Crystal Palace (which was built in Hyde Park for the 1851 Exhibition, then transferred to Sydenham Hill).

1873 The Alexandra Palace together with the Willis Concert Organ was burned to the ground.

1875 A new Alexandra Palace was opened, its new Great Hall containing a new Father Willis' Grand Concert Organ.

1907 After various alarms about closure, the Park, Palace and the Organ were saved for the people.

1914 to 1918   The First World War saw first refugees, then internees housed in the grounds. The organ was vandalised by soldiers.  After the war, the Palace gradually returned to life, but not the organ.

1925 An Organ Restoration Committee was set up.  When Queen Alexandra, widow of Edward VII, died, the fund was dedicated to her memory.

1929 December saw the grand opening of the restored organ.  It was not long after this that Marcel Dupré ‘the greatest organist of his day’, giving his first recital on the organ, called it ‘The finest Concert Organ in Europe’.  However, the use of the organ with orchestras and bands was limited because of its old-fashioned pitch (old “High Pitch”).

1939 The pitch was lowered to modern concert pitch, the cost being met by the proceeds from a grand Handel Festival conducted by Sir Henry Wood before an audience of 5,000.

(Present-day friends will be intrigued to learn that there was £30 left over which was to have been spent on a humidifying plant, but then the Second World War broke out, and ...)

1944 A V1 Flying Bomb blew out the Rose Window behind the organ, and although the organ wasn't badly damaged by the blast, it soon was by the weather.  Years of neglect followed.

Early 1960s Another Appeal was started up, but died out without getting anywhere.

1966 The Palace passed to the newly formed Greater London Council. One political party, egged on by the demolition lobby, wanted it knocked down, the other party wanted to sell it.  It was publicly stated that it was laughable to think that people would still come to the Palace in their thousands and anyway, if they did the floor would fall in.

1969  The Alexandra Palace Arts Society was formed.  At its first ‘Messiah’ with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, a choir gathered from all over England and Wales, and with Yehudi Menuhin giving his services as conductor, before a very large audience, proved the GLC wrong on both counts. (The concerts were repeated in 1971 and 1973).

Once again, thoughts were turned to restoration.  The GLC would not allow further work to be carried out, but Henry Willis 4, great-­grandson of the original builder, succeeded in buying the organ from the GLC ‘on behalf of the nation’, to prevent further deterioration.  He prudently removed some of the pipes to his workshop for safe keeping, but the GLC ruled that the casing and the dominating pipes from the 32 foot pedal diapason had to stay.

1970 This was the year in which EMI produced their LP of pre-war performances on the Alexandra Palace organ by great organists of their day.  (In 1996 they remastered this onto a CD which was marketed by Mirabilis Records, EMI generously waiving their copyright so that the Appeal could benefit).

1980 The Palace was sold by the GLC to Haringey Council for the nominal sum of £1, but almost immediately came the disaster of the fire which destroyed the Great Hall, including what remained of the organ.

A public inquiry after the fire left no doubt that they wanted the Palace rebuilt, they wanted the Great Hall rebuilt and they wanted the organ rebuilt.  The problem was money.  The Palace, including the Great Hall, were to be rebuilt from the insurance money, but not the organ.

At this point, the Alexandra Palace Arts Society, which had never gone away, reformed itself, under the chairmanship of Felix Aprahamian, into the ALEXANDRA PALACE ORGAN APPEAL (APOA).  This has been going, with varying degrees of success, ever since.