By Rector Chori Paul Hale
For centuries Southwell Minster had been served by an organ on the beautiful pulpitum screen. Its task was to accompany the daily choral service, established here in the twelfth century and maintained without a break ever since. From the 1880s, when the Minster became a Cathedral, congregational singing in the nave became a significant factor and so the Bishop organ of 1892 contained some departments speaking East and some speaking West. The 1934 Hill, Norman and Beard rebuild, in its new W D Caröe case, developed this arrangement even further by placing the Great and most of the Pedal in the South nave triforium, an arrangement reversed by a further rebuild in 1971.

By 1989 it had become quite clear that a) an organ speaking in two directions worked satisfactorily in neither  and b) the 1892 and 1934 portions of the organ had deteriorated to the point that the only sensible option was wholesale replacement. Consequently a two-organ scheme was envisaged with an organ for all nave functions in the South nave triforium and an organ for all Quire functions built within the Caröe case, but speaking East only.

This all came to fruition by March 1996 when the new Nicholson organ on the screen was first heard in Vierne's Messe Solennelle on Easter Day. Wood of Huddersfield had built the nave organ (based on a fine Binns) in 1992. 

Essentially English with its Diapasons of 1860s tonality, the specification has been developed to include particularly full principal choruses, wide and narrow flute families, fairly wide-scale mutations, a voluptuous Cornet (taken down to tenor C for basse de tierce effects), and a zesty narrow-scale Sesquialtera for choral preludes. There are two sets of strings (calm on the swell,  more tangy on the choir) and, in addition to a plummy Clarinet, a versatile Vox Humana which can assume either a Baroque or Romantic mantle with ease. The stirring Solo Bombarde is matched by a sonorous Pedal Ophicleide, whilst the Pedal Bassoon plays Bach perfectly. A delightful English Great Trumpet, Swell Cornopean, Oboe and weighty Contra Posaune are complemented by a rather more splashy Clarion which adds a certain Gallic frissance to the tutti.

Specification