School awarded funding to restore rare pipe organ

A west London school has raised more than £327,000 with help from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to restore a rare pipe organ that was smuggled from Paris to London more than a century ago.

The instrument at Sacred Heart High School, Hammersmith, was built by Belgian craftsman Hippolyte Loret and was smuggled out of Paris in 1904 to stop it being seized by the French government.

Its history was uncovered after organ expert Dr William McVicker visited the school's Grade II*-listed chapel in 2024 to check the instrument's condition.

The two-year restoration project starts this month, with the organ being removed and restored by Mander Organ Builders before its reinstallation in August 2027.

In January, the school said it needed to raise £257,000 to restore the pipe organ so that it would once again be used for recitals and concerts.

It has now secured £247,788 from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, which will also be used to support education and community events relating to the organ and the site's wider heritage.

The school fundraised more than £80,000, which included grants from the Vine Hill Trust and Ruiz Corbella Trust and ticket sales to a concert and talk about the instrument's history.

The organ was commissioned by Catholic organisation Society of the Sacred Heart for the chapel at its girls' school at Hotel Biron in Paris.

But anti-religious policies introduced by the French government in the early 1900s led to convent closures and plans to seize the society's headquarters at the school.

To save the instrument, Mother Mabel Digby, then superior general of the Society of the Sacred Heart, arranged for it to be secretly dismantled and shipped to London in 1904.

It was reassembled later that year in Sacred Heart's chapel in Hammersmith.

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