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The Sacred Heart is blessed with one of the finest parish church organs in the country. We have it because of the vision of Fr John Driscoll SJ, who was choirmaster at the church for 40 years and a remarkable man in many ways. Besides running a famous choir, renowned throughout the land, he persuaded Fr Kerr, the Parish Priest in the 1900s, to erect a gallery for the choir, and using a generous donation from a parishioner, to commission J W Walker to build an organ on a lavish scale.

The organ was inaugurated in 1912. In all its main mechanisms the organ is pretty well as it was when it was built. Some changes were made in 1935, some cleaning and other restorative work done in the early 70s, and in 1985 urgent repair work was carried out by Manders who took the opportunity to make some tonal alterations to restore the organ to its pre-1935 sound.

Apart from the electric blowers which supply the wind, the organ is entirely run by air (tubular-pneumatic action). Air is conveyed through lead tubing to operate little motors which control what notes sound and which type of sound is heard. Each one of these motors, and there are literally thousands of them, are made of wood and leather (they look a little like the bellows that one used to use to encourage an open fire to catch). The leather has long passed its 'sell-by date', and much is perishing.

We have over the years been able to patch up as best we can with drawing pins, gaffer tape and the occasional matchstick, but many of the motors are inaccessible and require the removal or large sections or the organ to reach them. The lead tubing (thankfully no longer part of an EU directive - organs are exempt) is in remarkably good condition, but much of it needs to be renewed sooner rather than later. The seals that prevent air escaping are failing regularly, leading to a great rushing of wind, notes not sounding and the occasional cipher, where notes sound when you don't want them to!

The most serious problem, however, is the reservoirs, the 'lungs' that retain the wind from the blowers under pressure from weights on top of them. These are very large bellows made of wood and leather and there are lots of them. The leather is perishing after nearly a hundred years of use, and we cannot put off the day when these will simply fail and the organ will be silent. The reservoirs are the first thing put into any organ, the rest of the instrument being built around them. In order to remove and restore them, the rest of the instrument must be removed, incurring the bulk of the costs.

While the pipework is out, we would be crazy not to use the opportunity to clean them, repair pipes that themselves are showing signs of wear and tear (some suffer from a kind of metal fatigue - they literally fall over!), and make other essential repairs to the thousands of rods and connectors throughout the instrument.

Most organs require the sort of work we want to do after about 30 years (St. Paul's Cathedral is a good example as they are embarking on another major rebuild after the previous one in 1977.). Most organs too have electric action to control the sound, and this needs replacing every 30-40 years. Our tubular-pneumatic action has lasted nearly 100.

We are the generation of parishioners that has inherited the job of ensuring that it lasts for another 100. The work in 1985 was the first stage (none of those repaired sections have failed) - this is the second and final part of the restoration - and restoration it will be. We do not intend to change anything about the sound of the instrument that Fr Driscoll would have heard in 1912.