St. Peter and St. Paul, Cudham

The church of Ss. Peter and Paul in Cudham, Greater London, dates back to the 11th Century with the nave being built by the Normans, but a Saxon script reference is made to an earlier church here in AD 982.

The organ was built by William Sweetland in 1894 and appears to be entirely tonally unaltered. It is a fine example of his work and also of Victorian organ building. It was a trend in the later half of the 20th century to replace 8ft stops on organs like this, to have higher pitched stops, to make them more versatile, for example, to play Baroque repertoire. Thankfully, this organ has escaped this and the abundance of coherent choruses as they were designed for is wonderful. Despite the Great not having a 2ft Fifteenth, which some might think unusual, the Principal 4ft is voiced brightly which almost creates an effect of having a 2ft in the upper register. With some thought to registration, this organ can become extremely versatile - 'less is more' absolutely applies to this instrument.

The manual action is fully mechanical and the pedal division is on pneumatic action which may have been a later addition to accommodate an 8ft Bass Flute extension. The pedal action needs restoring, as around half the pedal pipes do not speak because of worn-out leather motors. In the sample set, these pipes were replaced with other repitched neighbouring pipes in the same rank.