What we do
Prices below are what we would actually quote in 2026 for an average two-manual instrument in a parish church. Anything unusual gets surveyed first, and the survey fee comes off the job.
Two visits a year is right for most buildings; three if you have underfloor heating or a summer concert series. We tune at 18°C with the heating set as you would have it on a Sunday, because tuning a cold building is tuning a different instrument.
You get the log: every pipe touched, every cipher cleared, and a short note on anything we think will need money within three years.
From £340 a visit · £610 a year for two
Nicking, languid height, toe openings, cut-ups. The work that decides whether an instrument sounds like a building or like a machine standing in one.
Most of what people describe as "the organ sounds tired" is a regulation problem, not a rebuild. It is worth having someone say so before you raise £90,000.
From £2,400 a division · roughly a week per hundred pipes
Historic instruments returned to their maker's intention, with a written record of every place we chose to depart from it and why. We work to BIOS conservation guidance and we keep what we remove.
Recent: St Aldhelm's Malmesbury (Bishop, 1881), the Painswick chamber organ (maker unknown, c.1790), and the Congregational chapel two doors down.
Quoted per instrument · typically £40,000–£220,000
Mechanical action, quarter-sawn English oak cases, spotted metal cast on our own sand bench at 85% tin for the fronts. Two to four years from drawings to the first Sunday.
We take two or three a decade. If the date does not suit you we will say so at the first conversation rather than the fourth.
From £180,000 · single-manual chamber organs from £46,000
Twenty to thirty pages, photographed, costed and ranked by urgency, written so your insurer and your faculty committee can both act on it without a translator.
A day on site, a fortnight to write. If you then instruct us, the fee comes off the job.
£1,150 fixed, anywhere in the south-west
A cracked chest is a heating problem before it is a joinery problem. We leave loggers in the building for a full season, then tell you what to change — usually the rate the heating comes up, not the temperature it reaches.
Cheaper than the repair it prevents, by roughly two orders of magnitude.
From £480 including the season's loggers
The ledger
Published because being asked for a ballpark twelve times a year and answering privately each time is a worse use of everyone's afternoon.
| Work | Basis | 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| On the round | ||
| Tuning visit, two manuals | Per visit | £340 |
| Tuning visit, three manuals | Per visit | £465 |
| Cipher call-out, on the round | Per call | No charge |
| Cipher call-out, not on the round | Per call | £210 |
| Bench work | ||
| Rank re-voiced and regulated | Per rank of 58 | £1,380 |
| New pipe, spotted metal, to match | Per pipe, 4′ C | £186 |
| Pallet re-leathering | Per chest | £2,950 |
| Bellows re-leathered in sheepskin | Per bellows | £4,400 |
| Paper | ||
| Condition survey | Fixed | £1,150 |
| Faculty-grade specification | Fixed | £1,850 |
| Season of climate logging | Per building | £480 |
| Care agreement, two manuals | Annual | £610 |
Care agreements
Single or two-manual, occasional use
Two or three manuals, weekly use, a choir
Daily use, recording schedules, four manuals and up
Case notes
Asked often
Almost never. Flue pipes go sharp as a building warms and flat as it cools; reeds move the other way. If the whole instrument has moved together it is the weather. If one rank has moved on its own, ring us.
If you are on the round, usually yes. If you are not, we will try, but we would rather tell you honestly on the phone than promise and miss.
A note that sounds when nobody is playing it — a stuck pallet, swollen wood or a piece of masonry dust. Usually a ten-minute fix, and free if you are on an agreement.
Yes, for about twenty-five years, and then you buy another one. A pipe organ that is looked after is a two-hundred-year asset. Both are legitimate answers depending on your building's plans.
For a rebuild, yes — pipework and chests come to Stroud, casework usually stays. We leave the building usable and the space swept.
Tuning: a fortnight. Bench work: four to seven months. New instruments: we are quoting 2029 starts. We will tell you the real date at the first conversation.
£1,150, a day in your building, and a document you own whatever you decide to do next. It is the only sensible first step and we will not quote without it.
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