£117,000 organ work is in the pipeline

BACK in the day . . . Jack Fenner at the Gaumont

Oldham’s mighty Wurlitzer organ, once played at the former Gaumont cinema, has a new home — and it could be played again by the end of the year.

Weighing seven tonnes, the £800,000 Wurlitzer will be piping up again at the Victoria Hall in Saltaire — a model Victorian village in Bradford.

The organ will become a major crowd-puller for the World Heritage site once a £117,000 renovation project is completed by the end of the year.

It was first played at the Gaumont in the heyday of cinema in June, 1937, when the cinema was opened by George Formby.

The original American Wurlitzer organ was one of the last shipped across the Atlantic before the outbreak of the Second World War.

The famous white and gold instrument is made of 700 pipes. They range from the width of a pencil to 12ins in diameter, each producing a distinct sound.

Now 70-years-old, the Oldham organ is one of the few working Wurlitzers in the country, with the most famous one in Blackpool’s Tower Ballroom.

In 1962, the Gaumont closed as a cinema but the organ was saved by the Cinema Organ Society, whose members were at the Victoria Hall when the organ's console was delivered on Saturday.

Northern chairman, Godfrey Nield, said: “This is the exciting part which everybody sees above the stage. We have put it on display in Victoria Hall to generate a bit of interest.

“It will be there until November, when it will go on the stage at the hall, installed on a hydraulic platform.”

Renovations will include fitting the organ pipework and the lifting mechanism into the hall.

Mr Nield added: “Work starts in a fortnight to convert two rooms and the stage to make an opening for the lift platform.

That will take about eight weeks, then it will take 12 weeks to install the organ itself.

The intention is that it will be playing in one form or another by the end of the year.”