31-Keyless Miricki Dean Fairground Organ 15

This small 31-keyless fairground organ was built new for a Mr. Webster in 1982 by Dean Organs in Bristol, England. It was the 30th 31-keyless organ built by them.

As far as we know, the organ toured in a fairground with Mr. Webster but its early years are not that well known.

In 1987 a man called Stuart Marti-Bowler found the organ rotting away in someone's garden, at the back of a field so he asked if he could take it for restoration.

When he got it home he left it in his garage to dry for a few weeks and he then got to work on restoring the poor instrument and its facade which was falling apart. He restored the pipework and got to work on moulding some new carved work, re-decorating the façade and the three central figures. As far as we know, he made some new pipework to go with the pipes that he had managed to restore.

The instrument was then housed in a display trailer and was travelled by Stuart with his Can Can stall and roundabout. As the years went on, Stuart kept changing, re-decorating and adding bits to the organ's façade including some extra pipework.

He made 2 drummer figures to go with the 2 bell ringers and the bandmaster. After getting Richard Dean's permission to copy their design for the two bellringers he spent two years making the drummer figures. The drummers he made out of papier-mâché, 2 wood blocks, chicken wire, clay and an old doll's face (from which he made a rubber mould) and they took him about a year each to make.

He then made a top piece for the organ with side sections decorated by Albert Lewis and he commissioned some brass twirling poles to go ether side of the figures. More recently he named the figures after the Dutch royal family.

The organ has been featured on BBC Radio Wales and also North West Tonight plus a few other TV and radio appearances over the years.

Like most organ owners, Stuart wanted to have a rest from the key frame so he had the organ fitted with a MIDI system which plays floppy disks. All the original cardboard music books which once belonged to this organ have now been sold to a Mr. Dundon in Cornwall. The organ also has a synchronized player system with two large loudspeakers at the back of it now which adds more sound and volume to each tune it plays.

We have always admired the central three figures on the organ which are made of fibre glass apart from the drummers which Stuart made. The three central figures are replicas of those on another 31-keyless Dean organ called "Red Dragon" which is owned by someone in North Wales.

When Stuart died they played the organ at his funeral in the street .As Stuart had requested, the organ played the famous march "Blaze Away" as the hearse came up to the church steps.

The organ was then sold to a man in Stockport and after a week or so he sold it on eBay in 2008 when a man called George Houghton luckily bought it then.

The organ is still owned by George at the moment, and the instrument is in the care of his friend Dave Stubbs.

For more information on this beautiful machine, please visit: http://www.dsvc.co.uk/fairorgan/

This video is owned by Totally Fair Organs Video Productions.

Category:

Music

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[lovingcheekypigs]

I do so wish Dave Stubbs and George Houghton would patch up the bellows and tubes connecting to those figures and re-spring the bellows as they are just not working properly anymore as this video proves. The woman ring their bells with such a weak pointless action nowadays and the bells sound so clangy. The whole instrument is going down hill infact. So sad!