RESEARCH NOTES

St Stephen's, Coleman Street, London
1775. Avery was paid £349 10s 6d that year,¹ and proposed minor alterations in 1776 for £36.² Much rebuilt 1907 and 1932; the case and what remained destroyed by bombing in 1940.³
Chamber organ
Avery 1776, 5 stops, in William Drake's workshop in Buckfastleigh 1995.⁴
Chamber organ
inscribed 'Johannes Avery Londini fecit 1779'. Refurbished (?) by Bishop, Starr & Richardson (brass plate) and supplied via Dr George Elvey to St Paul, Auckland, New Zealand 1859. Further altered by 'Mr Hewlitt of Manapai' 1879, and sold to Ponsonby Baptist Church, Auckland in the 1890s.⁵ Bishop's supplied an organ by Avery to Elvey in November 1859 and packed it up for shipping; although the details do not quite match it would seem that this is the organ.⁶ At present eight stops; restoration by Goetze & Gwynne planned.⁷
Chamber organ
Chamber organ by Avery, 1780, for sale from Gray & Davison in 1871 (Musical Times 339 (May 1871)).
Fonthill House(?)
Marsh's Journal, July 1781:
a Mr Avery, organ builder of London called on me with a long story of his being going to repair & improve Mr Beckford's organ at Fonthill & that as he must necessarily come thro' Sarum he sho'd be glad to avail himself of the opportunity of putting the Cathedral organ to rights, which he understood had been tamper'd with & was in bad condition, for w'ch purpose he wish'd me to recommend him to the Dean. Not however having then heard of any such person as Mr Avery I beg'd to decline introducing a stranger, on w'ch he introduc'd himself, but without effect as he was not employed & I had afterw'ds some reason to doubt his being then employ'd by Mr Beckford, to whom I heard he had revers'd the story by making his coming to Sarum the pretence for offering his service at Fonthill. The next day (Sunday) I took him to see St Edm'ds organ w'th its new improvements w'ch however he scouted much, saying he had burnt many a better one than that. I also at his desire took him to see St Tho's organ w'ch being made by a London builder, he was pleas'd to have a much better opinion of.⁸
Captain Lemon, Bryanston Street
John Marsh's diary records (28 August 1782):
This Organ was built by John Avery of London for Col Lemon who sold it to Sir John St. Aubyn it then stood at No. 2 Bryanstone Street, was taken down and sent into Cornwall 1790 and erected at the Mount [St Michael's Mount Castle Chapel] in 1791 by J. Avery.
III/14.¹⁰
Chamber organ
inscribed 'Avery Londini fecit 1783', at St Andrew, Northborough, Soke of Peterborough. Restored by S.E. Gilks. 6 stops CC compass.¹¹
Chamber organ
inscribed 'John Avery 1790'. Bought by the Revd W. Joyce, curate of Dorking, in July 1842 and set up in a loft above the Vicarage stables.¹² Thought to be the organ brought from a house in Bushey Heath 1956 and restored by Mander for the chapel of the Royal Foundation of St Katherine-at-Ratcliffe, London. 'Henry Holland, Nephew and successor to George Pyke, Organ builder to his Majesty, No. - Newgate Street, London' is written in ink on the back of the nameboard. GG compass, 4 stops. In 2003 to be dismantled by Mander and moved from the gallery to the floor of the chapel.¹³
St Peter-ad-Vincula's, Great Coggeshall
'Avory 1790, put up here in 1819 at a cost of £200 defrayed by an inhabitant'. II/1, one octave of German Pedals (Sperling, 2,7). Sperling's dates ending -0 are particularly unreliable.
Chamber organ
inscribed and dated 1791, at St Mary's, Black Torrington since 1902, until 1902 at Berrow and before that at St Michael's, South Brent. Restored by William Drake 1987. 5 stops, GG compass.¹⁴
Sir John St Aubyn, Clowance House, Crowan
an organ moved by Avery from St Michael's Mount Chapel in 1791. Buckingham thought that it was made by Byfield.¹⁵
St Crewenna's, Crowan
a one-manual organ, with a trumpet added by Avery, moved by the same from Clowance House in 1791. Buckingham thought, again, that it was made by Byfield.¹⁶
Chamber organ
inscribed 'Avery Londini fecit 1792', in the collection of Canon F.W. Galpin at Hatfield Broad Oak Rectory, then at Boston Museum of Fine Arts since 1917. Restored by the Andover Organ Co. 1958. 3 stops, CC compass.¹⁷
Chamber organ
signed 'J. Avery 1793' inside. Found in Leeds by J.P. Hall, organ-builder of Kendal, and now at Finchcocks, Goudhurst. 3 stops, CC compass. The case has a false top half.¹⁸
Mr George Young, Sheffield
'one of J. Avery's portable organs made in 1793', enlarged by Buckingham in 1829 with a general swell and new Gothic case. GG, 3 stops.¹⁹
Chamber organ
inscribed 'Avery Londini 1793: St Margaret's Churchyard'. CC, 3 stops. It belonged to Edmund Ashworth Radford (1881-1944) who was MP for South Salford 1924-39 and Rusholme 1939-44. He lived at White Gables, Wilmslow.²⁰ The organ passed to his daughter, Mrs Elliott who loaned it to Heaton Hall in the 1970s and 80s. Later with her son Simon Elliott of Westmorland and given by them to the National Trust for Gibside Chapel in 2002. Restored Goetze & Gwynn 2003.
Chamber organ
bought by R.O. Assheton of Old Bilton in 1871 from Walker, and placed in the memorial chapel of Nunc Dimittis there in the 1890s. In F.H. Sutton's drawing it is dated 1793.²¹
St John the Baptist's, Croydon
1794. II/24 plus pedal pipes added by Elliot in 1819. Gothic case.²² Destroyed by fire 1867.
Female Orphan Asylum Chapel, Lambeth
Marsh visited in November 1797 when he returned to the City 'by way of Black Fryar's Bridge', which makes it likely that this (in Westminster Bridge Road, founded 1758) is the Asylum referred to. He says:
Mr Avery having told me of having much improved & enlarged the organ at the Assylum, I on the next morning walked there ...The touch was also very stiff & deep & the keys plac'd in an unusual manner, those of the choir organ being in the middle & the great organ keys at the bottom; so that if I wanted to play the cho'r org. bass to the Swell, my left hand was sure to come down with a crash upon the full organ bass instead. ... a very compleat one, but too powerful, I thought, for the building... ²³
Evidently the organ had three manuals.
St Nicholas's, Sevenoaks
1798. Rimbault²⁴ reproduces a handbill for the opening on 28 October by Samuel Wesley which he dates 1788, but this is an error: it refers to 'the late glorious victory of Admiral Nelson over the French fleet on the the 1st August', which was, of course, the Battle of the Nile, in 1798. The organ was 'left to the Parish ... by James Wright Esq late of Greenwich'.
First Church Society, Salem, Massachusetts (the Revd Dr Prince's Meeting House)
1799, installed 1800, II/13, £341. Replaced or rebuilt 1826.²⁵
Auckland Castle Chapel
repaired 1802. Buckingham records that 'J. Avery 1802' was written on the back of the organ.²⁶
St Margaret's, Westminster
Contrary to the antiquarians, this contract for this organ was approved on 10 November 1800 and certified complete on the 3 June 1802. The contract was for III/22 plus 'one Octave of double Bafs or Pedal Pipes, on the same principle as those made by the said John Avery in Westminster Abbey ...'; in a Gothic case by S.P. Cockerell. The price (again contradicting the antiquarians), was to be £500 plus the old organ.²⁷ Rebuilt Holdich 1859, Hill 1867.²⁸ Some pipework may remain at St George's Cathedral, Cape Town where it was rebuilt in 1909, after a period in Leeds.
Carlisle Cathedral
1806 'by Avery London opened April 6 1806 but not finished at the time:The whole Planed & built under the direction of A. Buckingham' III/17, Gothic case, GG long octaves.²⁹ The contract was signed in July 1804. Sold in 1856 to G.H. Head of Rickerby House (which is in a northern suburb of Carlisle) with a view to erecting it in the Carlisle Atheneum. However, it was instead rebuilt by James Nicholson at Hexham Abbey in 1857, with further work by F.C. Nicholson in 1885. A new organ by Norman & Beard in 1905 incorporated many old ranks.³⁰ It was dismantled c.1974.

UNDATED
W.H. Burland, Boston, Lincs
a chamber organ by Avery for sale in 1859, 3 stops.³¹
Friar Gate [Unitarian] Chapel, Derby
'one of John Avery's make; a portable organ'. CC, 4 stops, with a false top nearly doubling the size.³²
Edgeware Road, London
In December 1782 John Marsh went with 'Mr Avery to see a small organ of his making in the Edgeware Road' .³³
St John's, Smith Square, London
An annuity organ was proposed by Henry Porter in 1749 for £30 p.a. and certified complete by John Robinson and Joseph Kelway in 1751. On the death of Mrs Porter in 1793 a new organist was appointed, and it was repaired in 1819, 1841 and 1890.³⁴ In a Schedule of 1892 it was said to have three manuals, with work by 'Father Schmidt and Avery; added to by Hill'.³⁵ Anything remaining was destroyed by bombing in 1941.
St Leonard's, Streatham [now London]
'Streatham/ A small organ by Avory, enlarged by Lincoln in 1813, burnt at the fire in the church tower in 1830' (Sperling, 1, 163). The nave of the Parish Church of Streatham was rebuilt in 1830-1, so this is doubtless the building.
Morval House, Cornwall
Later at Trewarne House, Pelynt for '30 to 40 years' until 1932, when bequeathed by Lady Trelawney to the Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro. It was restored in 1932, and loaned back to Morval House in 1989, which seems a curious proceeding, since it is a private house, not open to the public.³⁶ Inscribed 'Avery Invenit Et Fecit'. Restored by Heard & Sons (in 1932?). 4 stops, no display pipes.³⁷
St Mary's, Truro
'the sexqualtra bafs ... altered by John Avery'.³⁸
REFERENCES

(All the entries from Buckingham's notebook are taken from the transcription in Barnard, L.S., 'Buckingham's Travels', The Organ, LII-LIV, 1972-4)
1. Guildhall Library, MS 4458, Vol. 4
2. Gh MS 4457
3. Plumley, Nicholas, The Organs of the City Of London (Oxford, 1996), 198
4. NPOR
5. Thomas, Allan, Facing the Music. Church Music and the Organ in a 19^th century
New Zealand Church' (unidentified article (1980s-90s?)), 44-6
6. Bishop records, courtesy of John Maidment
7. John Maidment, pers. comm. 2003
8. Robins, Brian (ed.), The John Marsh Journals. The Life and Times of a
Gentleman Composer (1752-1828), (Sociology of Music, 9, Stuyvesant NY, 1998), 239
9. idem, 270-1
10. Buckingham 207, 102 (1824, 1842)
11. Wilson, Michael, The Chamber Organ in Britain, 1600-1830 (2^nd ed., Aldershot, 2001),
173
12. Joyce, F.W., The Life of Sir F.A.G. Ouseley (London, 1896), 28-9
13.   author's inspection, 2003.
14.   Wilson, op. cit., 174
15.   Buckingham, 207, 101 (1824)
16.   idem.
17.   Wilson, op. cit., 171-2
18.   op. cit., 172
19.   Buckingham, 211, 85
20.   Who was Who
21.   Sutton, F.H., Church organs, their Position and Construction (facsimile of the 3^rd
edition (1883) with notes by C.H. Davidson, Oxford, 1998), introduction, 14
22.   Buckingham, 211, 84-5
23.   Robins, op. cit., 679
24.   Hopkins, E.H. & Rimbault, E.F., The Organ, its History and Construction (2^nd ed.,
London, 1870), Part 1, 149
25.   Owen, Barbara, The Organ in New England (Raleigh, 1979), 19-20
26.   Buckingham, 209, 37
27.   St Margaret's Vestry Minutes, 1795-1805, Westminster Archives, E2431
28.   Musical Standard 185 (15 February 1868)
29.   Buckingham, 205, 13-14 (1823)
30.   Reay, Harold T., The Organs of Hexham Abbey (Hexham, 1969,) unpaginated.
31.   Musical Times 194 (April 1859)
32.   Buckingham, 208, 182 (1824)
33.   Robins, op. cit., 275
34.   Smith, J.E., St John the Evangelist Westminster. Parochial Memorials (London, 1892,
48-9
35.   op. cit., 55
36.   Information from the Royal Cornwall Museum 2003
37.   Wilson, Michael, The English Chamber Organ/History and Development
1650-1850 (1^st ed., Oxford, 1968), 56
38.   Buckingham 207, 99 (1824)

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