Newly restored pipes for the York Minster organ are returned following refurbishment on September 15, 2020 in York, England.

The once-in-a-century project to refurbish the Grand Organ began in 2018. Organ specialists Harrison and Harrison removed the instrument, including all its 5,403 pipes to their workshop in Durham for repair and rebuilding.

The refurbishment work has been the first on this scale since 1903.

The current instrument dates from the early 1830’s and is one of the largest cathedral organs in the country, weighing approximately 20,000kg. The 5,403 pipes range in length from the size of a pencil to 10 metres long.

Due to their regular use and environment, cathedral organs ideally need small scale cleaning and adjustment every 15 to 20 years, with more extensive repairs carried out every 30 to 35 years and a major refurbishment every 100 years.

Images (c) Ian Forsyth / Getty Images

See more of my work in my galleries & blog at Room 2850

All rights reserved.

No usage without arrangement.


Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: