Henry Willis (Organ Builder)
Designer and Manufacturer of Organs, of 18 Manchester Street, Gray's Inn Road, London, and later also of Liverpool.
of Rotunda Works, Camden Town (1871)
1845 Henry Willis (1821-1901) went into business for himself
1846 He rebuilt the organ of Tewkesbury Abbey
1847 He rebuilt the organ of Gloucester Cathedral
1848 Returned to London and established his workshop in Foundling Terrace, Gray's Inn Road
Most of his work at this point was applied in the west of England
1851 He made a startling appearance in London with a seventy-stop organ for the Great Exhibition, the first successful organ of this size in the land. This was followed by the hundred-stop organ for the St George’s Hall, Liverpool, ordered on the strength of the Exhibition organ (1854-5).
Thereafter, for the next fifty years, a stream of organs issued from the Willis works, ranging from the very large to the very small.
After the Great Exhibition, Willis' instrument was rebuilt in Winchester Cathedral at the instigation of Samuel Sebastian Wesley.
1854 Opened a branch in Liverpool
1859 he moved his works to 119 Albany Street, Regent's Park.
1862 At the Industrial Exhibition Willis exhibited an organ which was afterwards installed in the Alexandra Palace, where it was destroyed in a fire in 1873.
1863 Moved the business to The Rotunda in Rochester Place, Camden Town.
1871 Designed the Grand Organ at the Royal Albert Hall
1872 The instrument for St Paul's Cathedral solved the mechanical and aesthetic problems of siting a large divided organ to the satisfaction of musicians and ecclesiologists.
Other cathedral organs by Willis included: Canterbury (1866 and 1886), Carlisle (1856), Durham (1876), St Mary's, Edinburgh (1879), Glasgow (1879), Hereford (1879 and 1892–3), Lincoln (1898), Oxford (1884), St David's (1883), Salisbury (1876–7), and Wells (1857 and 1891); the organs of Lambourne parish church (1858), Reading town hall (1864 and 1882), and Truro Cathedral (1887) are some of the few of his organs to have survived without significant alteration.
1878 His sons, Vincent and Henry II, were taken into partnership.
1883 Henry II was sent to Liverpool to assist Vincent in the running of the Liverpool Works. In fact, Vincent spent much of his time devising new actions for the instruments so Henry II had the whole responsibility for the output of the Liverpool branch. This obsession with invention became a cause of dispute between the brothers.
1901 After the death of Henry I, his son Henry II and grandson, Henry III, moved to London.
1910 Henry III completed his apprenticeship with the company with his work on the organ for the Lady Chapel of Liverpool Cathedral, which he set out, supervised, scaled, voiced and finished.
1910 Henry III became a partner and gradually assumed more responsibility
1912 Henry II retired.
The works were moved from Homerton in East London to the Lewis Works in Brixton.
1948 Henry IV started an apprenticeship; on completion, he was sent to manage the Liverpool branch and to supervise the restoration of the organ in the St George’s Hall after war damage.
Henry IV remained in Liverpool until his father’s death following which he re-organized the firm by selling the London premises and building a new factory at Petersfield in Hampshire.
1997 David Wyld became managing director on the retirement of Henry IV. David, a chemist by training, had an objective to bring the Company back to the forefront of British Organ building and maintain the Willis characteristics and house style which has, in some areas, meant a reversion to the older methods of the firm.
2000 The Head Offices and factory re-located from Petersfield in Hampshire to Liverpool.
See Also
Sources of Information
- [1] Henry Willis and Sons
- Biography of Henry Willis, ODNB