Rare school organ secures funds for restoration

A school in west London has secured the money it needs to restore a rare pipe organ that nuns smuggled out of Paris more than a century ago.

Sacred Heart High School in Hammersmith raised just over £80,000 through donations and events, and the National Lottery Heritage Fund has agreed to cover the rest.

The instrument, built by Belgian craftsman Hippolyte Loret, was secretly shipped to London in 1904 to stop the French government seizing it.

Alex Dijkhuis, who works at the school and is involved in the project, said: "I can't tell you how exciting it's been."

She added: "We did a lot of fundraising ourselves, we had lots of donations from the public and from parents.

"We're thrilled to hear that they're [the National Lottery Heritage Fund] going to pay us the extra money needed for the organ, and more, in order to promote the wider heritage of this site," she said.

In total, just over £300,000 will go towards the project.

Staff had long assumed the organ was original to the school's Grade II*-listed chapel.

That changed in May 2024, when William McVicker, curator of organs at the Royal Festival Hall, came to check its condition and noticed its stops were labelled in French.

He suspected it was a Loret, and research showed the Society of the Sacred Heart had commissioned the organ for one of its school chapels in Paris in 1861.

According to Dijkhuis, McVicker described it as "one of the rarest in Europe".

In the early 1900s, the French government's hostility towards religion led to convents being closed across the country and sisters being expelled.

The school said the authorities then planned to seize the society's Paris headquarters, where the organ stood.

Mother Mabel Digby, then superior general of the society, arranged for the organ to be taken apart in secret and sent to London, where it was rebuilt in Hammersmith that same year.

"To save their precious organ, the nuns packed it up into crates and shipped it here to us," Dijkhuis said.

The organ was electrified when it arrived in 1904, but it now has to be played using its original hand pump, and many of its stops no longer work.

The restoration will return it to electric power.

"All the pipes inside are lying over each other, so you can't hear the proper rich sound of this incredible instrument," Dijkhuis said.

Before the organ is taken away, pupils will be invited to a workshop to watch it being dismantled.

The school hopes to have it back by August 2027 and plans to hold public concerts and recitals, including a choral concert to mark the end of the project.

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