Sacred Heart High School has won nearly £248,000 of lottery money to restore the only known Hippolyte Loret organ in the UK, rebuilt in its chapel by a convent's sisters.
Sacred Heart High School in Hammersmith has won nearly £248,000 from the National Lottery to restore its chapel organ, which was secretly taken out of France in 1904.
No other pipe organ in the UK is known to be the work of Hippolyte Loret, a Belgian organ maker of the 19th century. Fundraising by the school has already brought in £327,815 for the work. Part of the money will pay for educational and community events about the school’s past as a centre of women’s activism, which goes back to 1669.
For years the organ was thought to date from about 1883, when the school chapel was built. Research has since shown that Loret made it around 1861 to 1862 for the Sacred Heart convent in Paris.
A French law passed in 1901 restricted religious congregations. Convents closed as a result, and religious orders were barred from teaching. When officials started auditing the Paris convent’s possessions, the sisters feared the organ would be seized. They took it apart and moved it to London, where it was put back together in the Hammersmith chapel. Over the next century the story was forgotten and the organ fell into neglect.
Its origins came to light during a condition survey carried out by Dr William McVicker, the Royal Festival Hall’s organ curator. One stop carried the label “Flute Pyramidale”. Dr McVicker had come across that feature just once in his career, in an old church in the Belgian capital. More research followed, and it established Loret as the builder. Only a handful of his instruments still exist anywhere in Europe. The story of the organ’s escape is now being turned into a documentary.
The organ is now being dismantled and taken to Canterbury, where Mander Organ Builders will spend two years restoring it. It is expected back in Hammersmith in August 2027. It will then host public recitals and choral concerts, and pupils will have the chance to learn to play it.
Mander Organ Builders, in Canterbury, over two years.
It is expected back in August 2027.
Yes. It will host public recitals and choral concerts once it returns.
The stage musical based on the 2014 film, about lesbian and gay activists who raised money for striking Welsh miners, comes to London after two sold-out…
The canalside park opened in 1960 on land once covered by a white lead factory and its terraced streets. It took until the late 1970s to…
A 27-metre batik hangs above the nave of St Cyprian's in the Bagri Foundation's first Springboard show, the artist's debut in the UK.
Magritte's paintings hang beside work by more than 40 other artists, from a Jeff Koons locomotive to a bird with a woman's face.
We use strictly necessary cookies to run the site and to remember this choice. With your permission we would also use analytics cookies, to count visits and see which stories are read, and advertising cookies, so the adverts that pay for How2London can be shown and measured. You can accept all, reject all, or choose for yourself. Read our cookie policy and privacy policy.
Needed for the site to work and to remember your cookie choice. Always on, no consent required.
Google Analytics 4 counts visits and shows which stories are read. Without consent it runs without cookies.
Google AdSense cookies, used to show and measure adverts. Our own How2London banners need no cookies and are shown either way.
