The National Pipe Organ Register

The NPOR aims to list details of every organ in the country. BIOS welcomes updates and corrections which can be sent through the Fast Track service. The National Pipe Organ Register is free of charge to users but costs money to provide. Please consider making a donation.

A history of the development of the NPOR from 1992 to 2012 and a description of what it provides to users and information editors was written by Dr Mike Sayers and published in the Journal of the British Institute of Organ Studies volume 36 (2012) page 143 et seq. A pdf version is available. A follow-up article taking the story to 2017 appeared in the Journal of the British Institute for Organ Studies volume 41 (2017) page 179 et seq. An extended version of this article including descriptions of the XML table formats for the records in the NPOR can be found here.

The NPOR is owned by the British Institute of Organ Studies (BIOS) and its development is guided by members of the Council. The operation of the NPOR is managed by the Royal College of Organists through an agreement with BIOS. Data input and editing is done by a small group of extremely valuable helpers also managed through an agreement with the Royal College of Organists. BIOS is most grateful to all those who have contributed material to the NPOR; without them it would not exist.

Searches may be performed on building address and on builder name. The output from these is in the form of a short-list arranged by County and Town. For each survey the following information is shown:

• Name of building
• Address
• Index for the survey in the NPOR
• Surveyor code identifying the source of the information
• Date of the survey
• Number of manuals and whether pedals are present
• Builders and dates

Specific surveys may be selected from the short-list display and full details obtained. For many buildings, especially famous ones, a number of surveys are listed. These may be of different periods in the organ’s history or just different views of the organ compiled by different surveyors. As with any archive collection, it is the readers’ responsibility to select what is appropriate for their purposes. The NPOR is not able to confirm the contents of any particular survey but would be most grateful for information on corrections or omissions. Please see the notes for contributors below.

Places, counties and grid references in the NPOR

The NPOR comprises surveys of pipe organs in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Originally, addresses in the NPOR were based on the 1985 County boundaries, as defined in the Ordnance Survey Gazetteer. This caused much concern because of the disappearance of Rutland, the invention of Avon and Humberside and the very substantial changes in Wales and Scotland. Place are now primarily located by their Historic County which corresponds to the Ancient County from the 1891 census as defined in the Association of British Counties’ gazetteer (see their website for a map of UK counties at this date, and for further information at https://www.abcounties.co.uk. Where the 1891 and 1985 counties differ, the 1985 county is shown in brackets. Each place is identified by its National Grid reference to a 1Km square. National Grid references are defined by a 2-letter pair (identifying a 100Km tile) followed by 2 digits for eastwards offset and 2 digits for northwards (e.g SP5008). Individual buildings are capable of being identified to the nearest 100m by 2 letters + 3 digits + 3 digits (e.g. SP 506 086). We would be happy to receive such grid references for individual buildings where you are sure the information is accurate. The Ordnance Survey Gazetteer and OS maps are used to verify the location of places before they are entered in the NPOR. The counties of Northern Ireland are identified by the Irish Grid Reference System, which is similar except that the 100km tiles are identified by a single letter. There being no gazetteer for Northern Ireland, the places have been identified from the Discoverer Series maps with the invaluable assistance of Alistair McCartney. All places in Northern Ireland have the same Historic County of Ulster. The Channel Islands lie outside any Grid Reference system, and use a dummy reference.

Notes for contributors

The NPOR continues to welcome contributions to the database but in order to enable the editors to process information as quickly and efficiently as possible, contributors are asked to note the following:

New surveys – information about instruments not currently listed on NPOR

Contributors should check the database carefully to ensure that the instrument in question is not listed, then preferably use the Fast-track service. Otherwise a form may be downloaded here and returned by email, or printed off and returned by post. Notes are included in the word doc file and are available separately here. Please be sure to include your name and full contact details.

Amendments to existing surveys

(These notes can be printed for ready reference)

Contributors are asked carefully to compare the information which they have with the NPOR survey in question, then preferably use the Fast-track service. Otherwise e-mail a list of changes as succinctly as possible in the following order:

• Survey (ref. no. and building name) to be modified
• Additions to existing information
• Amendments to existing information (ie Amend x to y)
• Deletions
• Sources/evidence for changes eg personal visit, with date, or full citation of published documentary evidence (giving author, title, publisher, edition, publication date and page number) or date and attribution of any unpublished sources
• Other comments supporting the proposed changes to the record
• Contributor’s name and full contact details (these are recorded, for administrative purposes only, and will not appear in the published survey)

Please note that the editors do not have the time or resources to follow up speculative information, and this will be accorded low priority.

Photographs

Photographs (colour or black and white) may be submitted electronically, but these should be in JPEG format not exceeding 128 kilobytes in size and should always be clearly identified either by NPOR survey reference number or (in the case of new surveys) by building name and place. Close-up images of stop jambs, if clearly legible, are also welcomed to supplement written stop lists.

Care must be exercised when submitting illustrations from printed books or pictures from Websites. As a general rule, photographs from books and other printed matter published less than 70 years ago should not be submitted without the express written permission of the publisher. Prior permission should be obtained from the owners of Website photographs (Webmasters may be able to assist), and evidence of this should be forwarded to the NPOR Database Manager at the address below with your contribution.

Email

It is very helpful if all email subject lines can include the survey number, where appropriate, and a brief indication of the building(s) concerned.