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Beside the- 11-month suspension of The Times, the non-appearance for six months of the BIOS Reporter is a matter of little moment. However, we realise that this dislocation has caused disappointment to our 500 or so readers, and we offer our apologies for this. In addition to apologies, we must also offer our thanks < thanks, that is, to the vast majority of our membership, who have borne with our difficulties so tolerantly. Unlike the Times, our problem has not been with over-manning - quite the reverse - and our modest budget does not permit us the luxury of disputes over new technology ; would that it did : the present cumbrous arrangements for producing the Reporter (dictated by our budget) only slow down production. We are most grateful to those members who have volunteered their services to help with the production and despatch of publications (notably Stephen Bicknell, Anthony Pike, James Treloar, Bob Wetton, and Vincent Woodstock) and we are hopeful that things will run more smoothly in the future. At the end of June, the long-awaited decision regarding the future of Preston Public Hall was announced. Following a Public Enquiry into the local authority's application to demolish this listed building, the Inspector recommended that consent be refused, and his advice was endorsed by the new Secretary of State for the Environment. Most importantly, the Secretary of State included the following sentence in his decision: "...it should be made clear that the organ itself is considered to be a fixture for the purposes of Section 54(9) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1971 and is therefore subject to listed building control." So, the Wilkinson organ (on which, see Dr. Gerald Sumner's article, in BIOS Journal 1) is now protected by the same listing order which covers the Hall itself. This does not solve the ticklish question of what steps (if any) the local authority will take to preserve both Hall and organ. It is, however, a crucially important precedent. As far as we are aware, this is the first time that an organ has been deemed to fall within the terms of the legislation protecting historic buildings and their fittings. Many other public buildings up and down the country contain organs which may be classed as original fittings ; until this decision, it seemed that there was no way of protecting them from either civic apathy leading to ejection, or the passing fancy of organists leading to wholesale rebuilding. The precedent set in the Preston decision must not be lost sight of. In the course of 1980, BIOS will celebrate its fourth birthday. It is a measure of the progress made in four years that 1980 will also witness our most ambitious conference to date. We are delighted to have been invited to host the annual conference of the Gesellschaft der Orgelfreunde - our German sister society - and will hold our own conference in collaboration with the Gesellschaft. The latter has warned us to expect as many as 500 delegates - so it is to be hoped that BIOS members will rally round to prevent us becoming too swamped! The conference will be based in Oxford, and will run from Sunday, July 27th, to Saturday, August 2nd. The programme is being designed to give the Germans as broad a picture of the English organ, past and present, as possible; there will be trips to London, Cambridge, and Eton, and a distinguished roll of recitalists is being assembled. Full details will appear in the January Reporter, and application for places will have to be made rather sooner than for our previous residential conferences. |