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News Items  Osmond Fisher 1817-1914)
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Organ
transplant reveals space oddity
By Sue Corbett: The Times of London, PLANS to rebuild the organ at Harlton parish church have shed interesting light on the life and work of its polymath Victorian rector, the Rev Osmond Fisher 1817-1914) who, in 1847-48, designed its Gothic-revival organ case. Fisher served this Cambridgeshire parish for nearly 40 years and was also a geologist, mathematician and geophysicist, who in 1892 made the bold assertion that the Moon had been formed by part of the Earth’s crust being gouged out of the Pacific basin and flying off into space. He also produced a pamphlet on growing roses. As chaplain of Jesus College; Cambridge. where he had read maths, Fisher met the Gothic-revival architect A. W. Pugin, designer of a new organ case for the chapel Inspired by this, Fisher designed one himself in a similar style, and, nearly 20 years later, in 1867, when he became rector at Harlton, he erected it as a memorial to his late wife Louisa, in the north porch of the attractive 14th-century church. Sadly he did not choose the best of positions. In the cramped north porch, his splendid case dwarfs the classic Bishop & Starr organ beneath it; there is not room for all the pipes; retuning is physically difficult, and the cold and damp get into both organ and organist. Enter Leon Lovett, 68, a conductor with the English Baroque Orchestra. When he moved to Harlton in 1998, the churchwardens asked him how to improve the organ’s performance. Lovett, who has since become the church organist, offered a radical solution. "For the long term, the thing to do was restore the organ case, rebuild the organ and erect a gallery for it in a nice, dry part of the church." Harlton is a village of not many more than 200 souls, but a large legacy from a former churchwarden, the late Manfred Hebblethwaite, gave the project wings, and an appeal is being launched for the extra £60,000 needed. The new organ, to be built over two years by Peter Bumstead, will use as many pipes as possible from the existing instrument, plus period pipes he has collected and a sound-board from a redundant organ donated by a neighbouring parish. The original Fisher case will be restored and housed, with the organ, on a newly built, oak gallery, giving apposite focus to a 14th-century archway between the nave and tower at the west end. "It will all look and sound quite magnificent," says Lovett who, over the past few years, feels he has got to know the Rev Osmond Fisher rather well "He is a most engaging character, and I sometimes feel, when I am practising, that he is sitting in the church, listening." In future, he should be able to listen to music that does justice to his organ case.
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