RESEARCH NOTES

RICHARD BRIDGE
In response to a plea for information, a correspondent writing under the name of 'Philorganon', contributed a short note on Richard Bridge to Notes and Queries in 1856.¹ He provided another version of the well-known description of Bridge's career printed by Hawkins and a list of organs.

Richard Bridge is supposed to have been trained in the factory of the younger Harris. Bridge, together with Jordan & Byfield had nearly the whole organ-building business of the country, from the death of Harris till the arrival of Snetzler. Byfield, Bridge and Jordan are usually spoken of as in partnership. This was not strictly the case, as their factories were separate, and the organs of each maker have distinctive characteristics. Their union was simply a private arrangement to obviate underselling each other, by which it was agreed that whoever was the nominal builder of any organ, the profits should be divided between the three.

This is a paraphrase of Hawkins in 1776,² and makes it more explicit that Byfield, Jordan and Bridge did not build their instruments in partnership, but rather operated a price-fixing cartel.

Christ Church, Spitalfields, 1730; St Leonard, Shoreditch, 1757; St Anne, Limehouse, 1741, burnt,; 1851 St George in the East, 1738 [sic]; St Alban, Wood Street, 1728; St Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield, 1731; St Luke, Old Street, 1730 [sic, consecrated 1733]; St Dionis, Fenchurch Street, 1732; St James, Clerkenwell, removed, in 1796, to Beccles, Suffolk; Chelsea Old Church, now at Bideford,; Devon Spa-fields Chapel Woolwich, Kent, 1754; Utham, Kent (small) Faversham, Kent, 1754; Bishops Stortford, Essex [sic], 1727; Minehead, Somerset St Nicholas; Great Yarmouth 1732; St George, Great Yarmouth, 1740; Farnham, Surrey 1736
[semi-colons are editorial additions]
   This corresponds in most (but not all respects) with Sperling and to some degree with Rimbault. 'Utham' is Eltham. St Dionis, Fenchurch Street (i.e., Backchurch) was by Renatus and John Harris (opened 1724), with the latter of whom Bridge is said to have trained.
   For St Michael, Minehead, Sperling says 'Bridge 1714'. Thomas Swarbrick was paid for 'making the new organs' in 1713-4, and detailed accounts show that he was the man responsible, receiving a total of about £155 during the next two years. Henry Miller and Swarbrick himself did further work at intervals, but there is no mention of Bridge.³ The most interesting entry is for Bishops Stortford, which does appear in Sperling, but giving only a date (1727) without attribution. According to local researches⁴ John Pape was paid £143 0s 7d for the organ in 1727. He is a very minor figure, only found elsewhere doing repairs in the City of London, and surely not capable of building a new organ which according to Sperling's description was substantial, having three manuals and eighteen stops. In any case, the price would indicate that it was second-hand. It was dispersed in 1880, some parts going to Quendon, where there is now a small eighteenth-century case, brutally cut off at the impost in 1938 when Rushworth & Dreaper filled it with a new instrument. Here Stephen Dykes-Bower, the late architect who lived at Quendon Hall, was organist for many years.
   Philorganon ends his note with the words: 'A similar list of organs by Byfield and Jordan can be forwarded, should I.H. [the original correspondent], desire it'. Unfortunately this never materialized.
   Thomas Green, organist of All Saints, Hertford and local tuner, left a meticulous account of his tunings from 1742-90.⁵ He tuned a spinet in 1764 belonging to a Mrs Briant of Hoddesdon, which he indicates was marked 'Edw'd Bridge fecit London'. This may be a mistake, but is worth recording. Boalch mentions a spinet marked 'Ricardus Bridge London fecit MDCCLIII'.⁶ It is also noteworthy how many chamber organs Green mentions in such a small area: he attended to fifteen different ones between 1750 and 1784.

LOUGHTON, ESSEX
The Elliot & Hill partnership book records a barrel organ in 1831 or 1832 for 'Laughton'.⁷ It emerges that this was for St Nicholas, Loughton, Essex. The church records⁸ have the following:

Some of the inhabitants of Loughton having thought that an Organ would assist the Psalmody in Loughton Church application has been made to Mr Bryceson of 4 New Road, Tottenham Court Road who is under the Patronage of the Bishop of London and it is maintained that a Self-acting Organ suitable for the purpose may be obtained for the sum of L. Fifty Four. [undated, c.1832?]

A list of subscribers follows, and £89 16s 0d were raised. However, Bryceson did not in the end get the job, as there is a loose receipt in the same bundle: 'June 13^th 1832, Recd. £90 for a barrel organ, Elliot & Hill'. It was renovated and tuned by William Hill & Co. in 1847 for £5 5s 0d.
MISCELLANEOUS
Some random requests for information.
   Where is the Elliot case supposedly in the Catholic Church at Ilford?⁹ St Peter and Paul RC, the most likely candidate, now has a c.1900 instrument supplied by Bishop.
   Who was Charles Harwood Clarke, subscriber to Hopkins & Rimbault? He is credited in the preface with having lent the authors an MS notebook of specifications.    
   What was the book by E.J. Hopkins 'to be issued by Novello on a similar subject [to Organ Construction]?
   What happened to the chamber organ inscribed 'Gulielmus Parker, Fleet Street' in the possession of the Royal College of Music but sold in the 1980s?

JOHN SMITH SENIOR AND JUNIOR
Were they in fact father and son? In the 1841 census ages were rounded down to the nearest five years, so as John Smith senior was 60 he could have been born anywhere between c.1781 and c.1777. John Smith Junior was born c.1794 according to the 1851 census. Even at the earlier date for John Smith senior his still seems a rather small gap, and one might wonder if in fact John Smith senior and junior were father and son, rather than related in some other way. Certain things can be taken as evidence against this: e.g., Joseph Monday succeeded to John Smith senior's business, and while John Smith senior is first heard of in Bath, John Smith junior was born in Bristol. Although John Smith senior took over Seede's business in Bristol, this would not have been until c.1820. However, they are referred to as father and son in the report of the Bath Gazette in 1848.¹⁰

JOHN AVERY ¹¹
David Burchell's interesting letter (p.10) makes the activities of the Female Orphan Asylum in Lambeth much clearer. Since Avery told Marsh in November 1797 that he had recently 'much improved and enlarged' the organ there it was not new, and was the three-manual instrument which he was already offering for sale in August of that year, apparently as he was to take it in part exchange for a new instrument. In typical Avery style he claimed that it was already his property.¹² Sperling says 'Asylum Chapel Lambeth. Avery 1799', so this may well refer to its successor.

NOTES
1. Notes & Queries, Vol. 1, 2nd series, 19 January 1856, 62
2. Hawkins, John, A General History of the Science and Practice of Music (London,
1776) XV, 692
3. Matthews, Betty, 'Thomas Swarbrick; The End of a Line', Aspects of Keyboard
Music (Oxford, 1992) 99, 107
4. Pamphlet published in 1940, copy in British Organ Archive, Hertfordshire file
5. Sheldrick, Gillian (ed.), 'The Accounts of Thomas Green 1742-1790',
Hertfordshire Record Publications, 8, (Hertford 1992) 31, 104-105
6. Boalch, Donald H., Makers of the Harpsichord and Clavichord 1440-1840, 2nd
edition (Oxford, 1974), 19
7. Edmonds, Bernard and Plumley, Nicholas, 'Thomas Elliot, Organ-Builder',
JBIOS 12 (1988), 71
8. Essex Record Office, Chelmsford, D/P/233/6/17
9. Edmonds and Plumley, op. cit.
10. Whaley, D.J.R., Nineteenth Century Organ Building in Bristol: A Study of the
Work of John Smith & Son, 1814-1860 (Bristol 2001), 11
11. BIOSRep XXVII,1,27
12. Rigby, Evan, 'John Avery and Stroud Parish Church', The Organ, 167 (January
1963), 126

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