Wormwood Scrubs prison chapel

The wonderful and large Victorian prison chapel has a very fine organ. Originally a Compton cinema organ from the Forum Ealing, this superb instrument was rebuilt by Compton in the early 60s and turned into a church organ. We started looking after it some 12 years ago and have undertaken first line maintenance and tuning since that time. Budgets are tight, as are the restricted working times and conditions (as you can imagine, it being in a prison) but despite that we have also managed to restore one division of the very rare Compton electro-pneumatic relays. These are superb pieces of engineering and are very fast in operation. As far as we know there are only two such Compton relays that survive.

The sound of this organ is big and grand and it can fill this cavernous space with ease. We hope to be able to do more work on it in future so that it can be enjoyed by congregations - whatever their reason for being there!