Organ Stops - Saving The King of Instruments

A filmic elegy to a disappearing world. Martin's spent his life playing and building pipe organs; nowadays he spends all his time rescuing them – “It’s a real crisis. There are at around fifty churches closing every year and half the organs in them are worth saving.” Beautifully made and historically important pipe organs are being scrapped in their hundreds. Once at the centre of British culture pipe organs are now neglected and unloved.

Often just one step ahead of the bulldozers, Martin and a small band of organ “anoraks” travel the country on rescue missions. In one ex-mining village in the north of England he discovers a fine rare organ who’s salvage and “rebirth” becomes the redemptive story at the heart of the film.

Along with their pipe organs the working-class Christianity at the centre of life in so many small towns and villages in the UK is disappearing. Congregations are dwindling fast because they're dying off without being replaced. One stalwart is sprightly 95-year-old Blanche Beer, who played the organ at her local Chapel for 80 years. We tell her story as she faces the loss of her church and her precious instrument. Her vivid description of life as a pit-village organist is a wonderful insight into a musical world that is being lost.