The Eastbourne Herald announced on 7th August: "Four churches in Eastbourne are to merge to form one church leaving three of the empty buildings up for development. Central Methodist Church in Pevensey Road, St Andrew's United Reformed Church in Cornfield Lane, Greenfield Methodist Church in Green Street and Upperton Road United Reformed Church in Upperton Road will join together and become Emmanuel Church. That church will be on the site of the Upperton Road church, on the junction of Upperton Road with and will involve a complete redevelopment."
Two of the churches have substantial organs:
The Central Methodist has a IIIP 36 built by Morgan and Smith, undated.
St Andrews in Cornfield Lane (Blackwater Road) has a IIIP 52 built by Hunter, Morgan and Smith, J H Males and Hill, Norman and Beard. It is probably a much better instrument than it sounds, as it is badly sited in a church with poor acoustics.
There is no news about the likely fate of these organs. Ideally the best of them will go to the new church, which I think will be a completely new building, and could sound much better there. However, I have no idea whether the substantial amount of money would be available for resiting, and even whether a modern church would think that a real pipe organ is a good thing.
Does anyone know any more about this?
Hope they've notified all the relevant re-housing bodies. It would be a shame if they can't be re-used.
I recall having a go at St Andrews - did suffer from a very poor location. Wasn't (isn't) Robert Munns the organist at St Andrews ?
Yes, Robert Munns was the organist.
Some years ago he played identical programmes at St Andrews and then at St Peters in East Blatchington, which has a smallish Copemann-Hart Electronic. In my opinion it sounded far better at St Peters, not because the organ was better, but because the acoustic was.
There is a further organ in Eastbourne, the IIIP 38 1937 Bishop Rebuilt 1980 by Morgan and Smith in the church of St Elizabeth - NPOR N15594. This church has suffered serious structural problems and some years ago the congregation moved to a refurbished building next door. Since then the abandoned church has remained empty whilst its fate is decided, so far substantially delayed by planning issues. Meanwhile the building is becoming progressively derelict. The organ, which presumably no longer has power connected to it, has since suffered very considerably in a damp and leaking environment. Someone will correct me if I am wrong, but I was told that English Heritage would not allow the organ to be removed because the building was listed. I rather think that this one will end up as a write off.
Yes Robert Munns was at St Andrews URC in the past. The comments about the acoustic are absolutely correct. As I understand it from hearsay I have received as DOM at the Parish Church, no firm decision has, as yet, been reached about the future of any of these instruments