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St Andrew's Anglican Church and Organ

Location

New Street, BRIGHTON VIC 3186 - Property No B1027

File Number

B1027

Level

Regional

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B1027 St Andrews Anglican

Statement of Significance

A church of which the original bluestone portion, dating from 1856-7, is quintessentially Webbian. The finely detailed west facade, with its gable belfry, bracketted string course, triple lancet windows and corner buttresses surmounted by pinnacles, is characteristic of Webb's church designs. The building was largely destroyed by fire in 1961, and the original nave was then incorporated as a transept in a new church (not included in the classification) by Louis Williams.
Church Revised Classified "Regional"03/08/1998

The pipe organ by Davis & Laurie 1962-64 and later enlarged and altered by Laurie Pipe Organs and S.J. Laurie is significant for historic, aesthetic and technical reasons at a regional level. The Laurie Pipe Organs organ at St Andrew's Church is significant for the following reasons:
- It was the largest entirely new church organ built in Melbourne in the 1950s-1960s period
- It has four manuals, one of these being an antiphonal 'Transept Organ'
- It includes the first horizontal reed in Victoria - the 'Festal Trumpet'
- It retains the majority of its original mechanisms, console and pipework
- It includes two four-manual drawstop consoles, both close to identical
- The tonal scheme is imaginative, with full choruses on four of the divisions, solo mutation stops and distinctive reeds, including a rare 32ft full-length wooden Contra Bombarde
- It has a distinctive appearance in which the basses of the Pedal Open Metal and Great Contra Salicional are flanked on either side of the exposed Great Organ and horizontal Trumpet
- The instrument benefits from a reasonable acoustic although it is noted that the original level of reverberation has been dampened in 1974 to accommodate speech
Organ Classified "Regional" 23/06/2014

Group