(from OHTA News, volume 44, no 3 (September 2019))
Edward Cornwall Cook was born in Cheshire in 1864 and arrived in Victoria on 29 April 1883. It is not known whether he trained as an organbuilder before his arrival. In 1889 he was declared insolvent. His premises were located in Barrington Place, Burwood Road, Hawthorn. He built at least three new organs in Victoria for the Presbyterian Churches at Echuca and Daylesford and the Methodist Church, Denham Street, Lower Hawthorn. He worked upon the organs at St Francis’ Church, Melbourne, the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Hawthorn, and St Paul’s Church, Ballarat. He later moved to NSW and was living in Milsons Point, Sydney in 1911 and engaged there as an organbuilder. He also was choir director at St Francis Xavier’s Church, Lavender Bay. He died in 1915 at St Leonards, NSW.
He was also an inventor of the combined snib lock and automatic safety drop latch (Weekly Times, 31 March 1894, p.11) and the Spitz and Co. pedal, and supplied pneumatic and electric action to existing organs. At the start of 19001, he had just completed the building and erection of an organ for the Lower Hawthorn Wesleyan Church and was tuner to the Immaculate Conception Hawthorn and St Brigid’s, Fitzroy. (Advocate, 19 January 1901, p.13).
Erected Hardy & Son organ, All Saints’ Anglican Church, Newtown, Geelong 1892
Alterations to J.W. Walker organ, St Paul’s Anglican Church, Ballarat
Alterations to Bevington organ, St Francis’ Church, Lonsdale Street, Melbourne
New organ, Presbyterian Church, Echuca. Riverine Herald 24 February 1893, p.2
New organ, St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Daylesford
Alterations to George Fincham organ, Church of the Immaculate Conception, Hawthorn
John Maidment
