Parishioners will be dusting down the prayer books and hymn sheets of their Victorian forebears for a service to celebrate the 160th birthday of their church organ next week.
The instrument at Ewenny Priory Church, near Bridgend, is one of the oldest working and regularly played organ in Wales. It was built by William Sweetland in 1850 and the service of Choral Evensong on October 21 will also commemorate the centenary of his death on that day in 1910.
The Book of Common Prayer of 1662 – which most church-going Victorians would have known off by heart – will be used for the service and all the music will be that written before 1850. It will be sung by the St Hilary Choir with students of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, conducted by Chris Mowat and accompanied by Sandra Williams. Organ Voluntaries will be played before, during and after the service by Martin Colton BA. BMus. MMus. FRCO, formerly organist at Sheffield Cathedral.
Sweetland, of Bath, build the organ for “the Gentlemen of the Theological College at Wells for use in the Palace Chapel, where they assemble daily for Divine worship”. It was moved to the Lady Chapel of Wells Cathedral in 1895, and then in 1999 to the newly restored nave of Ewenny Priory Church.
William Sweetland was born at Devizes, Wiltshire, on 5th September 1822 and from an early age showed his ability as a craftsman and musician. He became apprenticed to George Sherborne, an organ builder working in Bath, and in 1845, in his second year of apprenticeship, Sweetland built an organ entirely without assistance. In 1850 he built the organ now in Ewenny Priory Church at the age of 28, in that year setting up business on his own in Bath. By the time Sweetland retired in 1902, he had built about 300 organs, mainly for churches and chapels, but also for private houses. He died a hundred years ago, on 21st October 1910 and was buried at Bath.
The Ewenny organ is mentioned in a letter from the organist of Wells Cathedral to William Sweetland on 22nd March 1877 in which he writes: “You will be glad to know that the organ you built twenty-six years since for the Bishop’s Chapel still gives the gentlemen of the College great satisfaction and others who attend the daily morning service there.” The Ewenny organ is rare in having a compass down to GG, and is of great value in the interpretation of English organ music of the 18th century, much of which cannot be accurately played on modern instruments.
