Advertisement from the Illustrated Guide to the Church Congress 1897
Brindley & Foster was a pipe organ builder based in Sheffield who flourished between 1854 and 1939.[1]
Background
The business was established by Charles Brindley in 1854. He was joined by Albert Healey Foster in 1871 and the company acquired the name Brindley & Foster.
Charles Brindley was born in Baslow, Derbyshire, in the early 1830s. He retired in 1887 and died in 1893.[2]
Brindley was a follower of Edmund Schulze. He built solid instruments with powerful choruses using Vogler’s Simplification system. Pipes placed in chromatic order on the soundboards allowed for a simple and reliable key action and permitted similar stops to share the same bass, keeping both space and cost to a minimum. The Swell organ was often mounted above the Great in the German manner.
After the partnership with Foster they began to manufacture more complex pneumatic mechanisms for stop combinations; he also concentrated on the production of orchestral effects.
The business of Brindley and Foster was bought by Henry Willis & Sons in 1939.
St Andrew's Church, Keighley, West Yorkshire 1876? (Organ re-built 1955 Wm Hill, Norman & Beard Ltd., with only a very few minor tonal changes and re-siting of the Choir Organ on the opposite side of the chancel. Tonally still very much Charles Brindley)
Wallacetown Parish Church, Dundee, Scotland. 1891. Destroyed by fire in 1955.
Wesley Memorial Methodist Church, Epworth 1891. Restored in 2015 by Aistrup & Hind, organ builders of Lincoln. It was also enlarged by adding 4 new speaking stops.
Pietermaritzburg City Hall, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa 1893. The City Hall and organ were destroyed by fire in 1898, and subsequently rebuilt.
Holy Sepulchre Anglican Church, Grafton, Auckland, New Zealand 1896 (rebuilt with new slider soundboards by Norman & Beard 1913, but remains tonally the same.)
Pietermaritzburg City Hall, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa 1901 – one of the largest pipe organs in the Southern Hemisphere, and the largest organ produced by Brindley and Foster. This organ replaced the original 1893 organ, which was destroyed by fire in 1898. Extensively renovated in 1976 to change from pneumatic to electrical action with a movable Walker console.
Chalmers' Presbyterian Church, Timaru, New Zealand 1903
St Paul and St John the Evangelist, Monklands, Airdrie, North Lanarkshire, Scotland – Installed & dedicated 1911 and the only addition made to the original design, was the addition of a Tremolo Stop at some point. The instrument was restored in 1998,and is in original condition and retaining the original hand pump, which can still be used today if there is a power cut.
St Inacio de Loiola Parish, São Paulo, Brazil 1925, opus 2714, 2 manuals, pedal, 13 stops. The only original Brindley organ in America. It was built for the Anglican Church in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro. The organ was restored and installed at St Inacio in 1992.
