In Hopkins’ and Rimbault’s Organ Book is the following extract from the “Daily Advertiser” of October 27th, 1731:—“We hear that the curious new Organ, made by Mr. Bridge for the Church of St. Bartholomew the Great, is to be opened on Sunday next with an Anthem.”
When the Church was about to be restored, in 1868, this instrument was removed, and is said to have been “warehoused for preservation, but ultimately lost.”
The above engraving of it, from an original sketch made many years ago, and believed to be the only one extant, will perhaps prove the more interesting now that the fine old work of art can be no longer seen and heard in the venerable place for which it was built. It is to be hoped that the wooden erection at the entrance to the Choir may soon give place to a screen, surmounted by an organ, after the manner of that at St. Lawrence, Guildhall. Its case might present three fronts of pipes, a very fine example of which (probably the only one in or near London) exists at the Church of St. James the Great, Bethnal Green.
Particulars of Seals.
