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"A new organ was presented to the Church by King George I, at the cost, it is said, of £1,500, when the Church was completed in 1726. ..... The following inscription was conspicuous on a panel in front of this organ: 'The gift of His Most Sacred Majesty King George, 1726.' In the year 1799 this organ was advertised for sale, and the advertisement, which appeared in several journals, stated that the organ might be seen, on application to Mr Thomas Goodall, Bricklayer, Chandos Street; or to Mr Christopher Brown, Pawnbroker, of Long Acre, Churchwardens. In the year 1800 the organ was purchased by the Rev. Dr. Tattersall, Vicar of Wotton-under-Edge, in Gloucestershire, for the sum of £200, and was erected in the church of that parish, where it now stands --- with its original inscription --- 'a perpetual witness to the folly of our predecessors'." From St Martin-in-the-Fields: Past and Present, by Johnston & Waller, 1925. The exact significance of the unattributed quote slightly escapes me, but presumably it refers to the folly of the organ's sale for a pittance. The Reverend William Dechair Tattersall, a close contemporary of the Reverend Peter Monamy Cornwall at Westminster School, has a disconcerting habit of popping up in unexpected places. |
© Charles Harrison Wallace 2002, 2004
St Martin's Church, July 2003
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