Painstaking work on a 'spectacular' Casson organ

Wood Pipe Organ Builders completed the restoration of a two-manual organ built in the 1880s by Thomas Casson at All Saints', Thorpe Malsor, Northamptonshire. The elaborate 19th century console and case feature stencilled decoration.

Casson, a former banker with progressive views on organ building, created a series of instruments with experimental pneumatic actions of extraordinary complexity, of which the All Saints' instrument is an example.

Paul Hale, the organ consultant, wrote in Organists' Review: "To enter All Saints’ and then look west is to behold a quite remarkable sight – much the most spectacular nineteenth century organ in any village church the length and breadth of the land.

'Standing there, replete with 16ft pedal towers, all gloriously painted with lavish biblical references and images of saints and angels, is an organ by Thomas Casson, installed during the 1880s and restored by David Wood to full working order after many years of damply mouldering away.

'Wood took the organ apart in 2010 down to the smallest piece ... and painstakingly restored it to a fully functioning instrument, working out as they did so the function of numerous tubes and pieces of mechanism which had been disconnected over the decades.'