St Stephen's Kambah

St Stephen's Anglican Church
cnr Marconi and Wyselaskie Circuits, Kambah

G.A Smith 1910, reb T. Bunning and Anthony Welby, 2m., 7 sp.st., 3c., tr.

From 2001 OHTA Conference Handbook:

This organ was formerly located in St Paul's Presbyterian Church, Rozelle, N.S.W., and has its origins in the nineteenth century. It was acquired in 1910 from a private residence in Double Bay and was rebuilt and installed by George A. Smith at a cost of £250. The design of the instrument was not unlike the slightly larger organ rebuilt the previous year by Smith for the Rockdale Methodist Church.

Apart from the construction of a new lower case as a War Memorial in 1922, the instrument retained its original configuration until 1969 when Arthur Jones was engaged to undertake a number of tonal and mechanical alterations according to the fashion of the day. These included removing the top-opening swell box, renaming the manuals as "I" and "II", swapping ranks among the former Great and Swell divisions, and the removal of the Viol d'Orchestre for a Fifteenth 2'.

In 1975 the church was closed for worship, although the building was retained and re-used as a neighbourhood centre. The organ was purchased by Clive Gunning and moved to his various residences, firstly in Balmain and then Lithgow and Katoomba. It was purchased by Trevor Burming of Canberra on the removal of Clive and Margaret Gunning to Scotland in 1991. (The Gunnings were tragically killed in a car accident near their new home at Johnstone, Scotland, in 1994).

Originally intending to use the organ for his own use at home, Trevor Bunning placed the organ on loan to St Stephen's Anglican Church, Kambah, where it became necessary to find replacements for much missing pipework and to construct a new case, owing to height restrictions in the new location. The original façade arrangement was then passed on to the Lutheran Church in Chisholm, where it fanned a pipefront for a caseless 1962 Eagles organ, originally in St Andrew's Anglican Church, Sans Souci, N.S.W. Trevor Bunning then set out to reconfigure the organ as Smith had left it, while recognising that a considerable quantity of the pipework dating from 1910 (and earlier) was no longer available. Among the replacement ranks and sections of ranks are a Principal 4' from the former 1893 Alfred Hunter & Son organ in the Burwood Methodist Church, a Geigen Principal reputed to come from the former organ at St Mark's Northbridge (as rebuilt by Eagles in 1953), a bass octave for the Open Diapason from the former 1933 Leggo organ in St Joseph's Convent, Lochinvar, and a Dolce bass from the former 1914 Dodd organ at St Martin's Killara. In addition to this varied assemblage was a new Fifteenth, cast by Anthony Welby at his Nelligen workshop, near Batemans Bay. Mr Welby also did much work to restore and regulate the final corpus of pipe work, as well as some repairs to the Great soundboard. [1] A completely new case, with ornate filigree and cornice work, was designed and made by Trevor Bunning, using original kauri from Rozelle, supplemented with new kauri.

The 1910 specification was:

Mechanical key and pedal action [2]

[1] Trevor Bunning, "Organ Metamorphosis - new life for a redundant organ", Sydney Organ Journal, 23/5 (October/November 1992): 22-26.

[2] Specifications supplied by GeoffWel1s, February 2001.

Photos supplied by Trevor Bunning, June 2006