MORE THAN 50 YEARS OF SERVICE TO THE ORGAN PLAYING COMMUNITY
A family firm with deep roots in organ building
We are proud to have provided more than 50 years of service to the UK organ playing community through our high quality organ building services in West Yorkshire.
Our company was founded by Philip Wood. Born and educated in Huddersfield, he began organ studies with Winifred Smith FRCO. At 17 he was apprenticed to the local organ-builders, Peter Conacher.
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After rising to become general manager of Conacher, he established his own firm, Wood of Huddersfield in 1968. The first instrument was built that year and a series of practice/chamber organs followed.
The first major contract was for a three-manual organ of 40 stops in Huddersfield Polytechnic, now the University of Huddersfield. This significant instrument, completed in 1977, established the reputation for the growing firm.
Since then, we have worked on organs in churches, chapel, cathedrals and educational establishments all over the UK. Rebuilds have included St Asaph Cathedral, North Wales, and the famous Snetzler/Hill in Beverley Minster, East Yorkshire.​
Organs under our care have also included Wakefield Cathedral, Blackburn Cathedral and Southwell Minster. Our mechanical action instruments include that at Forest School, north east London.
Philip's younger son David, now managing director, joined the company in 1976. Having trained in the workshop, he has been involved in all aspects of organ building and is responsible for voicing. He advises the accreditation committee of the Board of the Institute of British Organ Building and the British Institute of Studies Historic Organs Listings Scheme.
Keith Jarvis, the former Professor of Organ Studies at the University Huddersfield plays the Toccata in G by Théodore Dubois on the Wood organ in St Paul's Hall in a recording made in the 1990s. Keith, an influential teacher whose students occupy important organ posts across the UK died in 2023.
'The firm has developed an enviable reputation for sensitive restoration and conservation work on all periods of organs'
We are grateful to Paul Hale, right, for turning the spotlight on our company in an edition of Choir and Organ Magazine.
Mr Hale, the former director of music at Southwell Minster and an experienced organ consultant, also considered another independent firm of organ builders, Henry Groves & Son of Nottingham
He begins with an account of how our founder, Philip Wood, was bitten by the emerging neo-baroque bug, and devised a series of classically voiced unit extension organs.
He described how his interest in progressive organ design took a leap forward when we won the contract for a new tracker three-manual for Huddersfield Polytechnic, now the University, installed in 1977. ​
“This superb instrument (with a case design by David Graebe, one of his very first) built a fine reputation in no time at all and has now been used for RCO Diploma examinations for many years. With the advent of that organ, Philip Wood, with a particularly able small band of former Conacher employees and apprentices, never looked back…
‘Under Philip's son, David, the firm has developed an enviable reputation for sensitive restoration and conservation work on all sorts and periods of organs, and David's skills as a voicer/finisher are evident in all their organs, from bringing the best out of the Snetzler pipework at Beverley Minster to transforming the voicing of the Noel Mander organ formerly in Jesus College Chapel, Cambridge and now in the chapel of Truro School.”
Mr Hale adds: “And what David and his team don't know about the organs of J.J. Binns isn't worth knowing it helps that they have curatorship of the Binns order books.”