LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Sir,
I can cast a little more light on William Fortrey and the organs of Galby and Norton in Leicestershire referred to by Paul Tindall in the July issue of the Reporter.
   Mr Tindall quotes the William Ludlam's allusion to Fortrey and his commissioning of a new organ 'made exactly after the pattern of that in the university church in Cambridge'. In the archives of Lincoln Cathedral there is a number of papers relating to a proposal by Thomas Parker to make a new organ (1767). Among them is an anonymous memorandum recording that

Thomas Parker organ maker in Grays Inn Lane. Holborn. London is the Person who repaired the University organ - He likewise repaired & made large additions to the organ which stood in the Chapel of Queens College.
   It was bought by Mr Fortrey of Norton by Galby in Leicestershire.
   Thos Parker likewise made for that Gentleman another Organ, exactly of the size & form of the University Organ, the measures of it being nicely taken for that purpose[.] Mr Fortrey was formerly of Pembroke [College], & much acquainted with Dr Long, & has great taste & nice judgement in musical Instruments[.]    (LCA: A/4/14c)

   Fortrey was a church builder. He commissioned John Wing the elder to rebuild Galby Church in 1741, and then in 1757 the younger John Wing began work on a new church for Fortrey at King's Norton (Norton by Galby). It cost £20,000 and is one of the most important churches of the early Gothic Revival. Pevsner describes it as possessing 'a seriousness of purpose not surpassed before about 1800' (Buildings of England: Leicestershire and Rutland (2nd edition, 1984, 190). It survives with most of its furnishings.
   Were the two organs intended for the two churches? King's Norton has a large west gallery (now empty) which could have held an organ, and the acquisition of an instrument for the new church would have been in keeping, both with Fortrey's alleged musical tastes and the High Church principles to which I suspect he subscribed. Clearly, more research is required.
   As to the fate of these two organs: the extract from the Barnsley records, quoted by Tindall, seems to answer for the Smith 'replica'. (The rival candidate, now at Littleport, has always looked to me like a nineteenth-century production). But what of the former Queens' organ? The college had purchased an 'intire new organ' for £164 6s 10½d in 1710. Unfortunately, nothing is known of its builder or stop-list. It had been removed by 1768 when the organ gallery was converted into a pew for the President, and it may be no coincidence that Thomas Parker was working in Cambridge, on the University organ, in 1766-7. Some ten miles south-east of King's Norton is Great Bowden. Bernard Edmonds wrote about the organ case there in BIOS Journal 1 (1977, 18-23). The upper part of the front is old and has marked affinities with a number of Cambridge cases of c.1700. BBE speculated that it originally formed part of the organ purchased for St Margaret's, King's Lynn ('from a Cambridge College') in 1676. However, there seems to be no documentary support for this, and the only print of the Lynn organ:reproduced in the article:shows an organ bearing no resemblance to the case now in Leicestershire. Is it not more likely that the Great Bowden casework came from Queens' College via one of Fortrey's churches?

Nicholas Thistlethwaite,      

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