Kirk Michael Parish Church

Gt: 8,8,8,8,4,2 Sw: 8,8,4,2,8,-,- Ped: 16.

Built by Samuel Renn, this instrumentwas originally installed in Bishopscourt

chapel in the 1850s, when it would have had2 manuals (with the upper manual runningfrom ‘tenor C’ (i.e. C13 of the moderncompass) only, and a set of 12 pedal pipes(instead of the present 30).

Renn was a well-known builder in his day,and the bright, clear, quality of his pipeworkcan be appreciated even at the time ofwriting (2008) when the instrument is inneed of cleaning and overhauling. The samepipe-maker has made almost all of the metaland wooden pipes (including the reeds) andall the ‘B’ pipes are marked with the longoutmoded use of the ‘#’ sign. In 1878, the

Renn was given to Kirk Michael ParishChurch, at a time when Bevingtons (aLondon firm) supplied Bishopscourt with amuch smaller 1-manual instrument. (It ispossible that the Renn was physically andtonally too big for Bishopscourt chapel).

Presumably it was then thatthe organ was ‘modernised’ bythe addition of a 12-stopsoundboard and 12 extranotes to extend and supply allof the swell stops with theirmissing bottom octaves. 18more pipes were added to thepedals to make up the fullcompass of 30 notes. Thiswork was skilfully carried out,successfully matching theoriginal pipework.

The original Renn case waseither replaced or extended.The soundboards presently

show two missing stops on the Swell, andone on the Great, though there are noempty stop positions on the console.

The white painting of the casework is to beregretted!