Since 2017, church pipe organs have featured in fewer than 2% of the total number of consistory court judgments reviewed in L&RUK[*], many of which have considered their replacement by digital or hybrid instruments. The circumstances of the recent judgment, Re St. Anne Stanley [2024] ECC Liv 2, are notable in that this is the third occasion on which a tuba rank from another church has been installed in the church. The original organ, “an attractive three manual instrument with some 1810 pipes”, was built by the well-known Liverpool firm of Rushworth and Dreaper in 1916, but without a tuba stop. In 2008 the stop was added from Holy Trinity Church Coventry, and “apparently replaced” in about 2013 from another Rushworth and Dreaper organ in Bristol” [7]. Continue reading →