Not to be confused with 🇳🇱 [url=/artist/16300297]"De Grote"/"The Great" 89-key Gavioli[/url] (ca.1890) in the Netherlands,
or ex-"White Bros." 🇬🇧
Mammoth Gavioli Fair Organ (1903)
in South Wales.
The "
Great Gavioli Organ,"
GV21 (built in 1902 as 112-keyless, conv. post-1920s to 89-key), also known as
Silcock's Gavioli (or "ex-Woolls Bros/Arthur Mills"), is a mechanical organ by the renowned French manufacturer
Gavioli et Cie — one of nine "giant" models supplied by the firm to England in the early 20th century; this specific organ was initially ordered by
James Crichton for his "
Bioscope" traveling cinematography shows. Alongside the White Brothers'
Mammoth Gavioli Fair Organ,
GV26, it's the last surviving 112-keyless Gavioli (albeit, in a converted state). The instrument was pneumatically driven, with a 3½ hp motor feeding compressed air through the valves to the pipes, controlled by an 89-key keyboard that reproduced the sequence of notes from a wide perforated cardboard roll.
At the dawn of the 20th century, these "gigantic" mechanical organs were in high demand among British showmen and fairground proprietors — convenient and practical "all-in-one" machines that covered all musical needs of a traveling show or street fair while serving as an eye-catching façade. After 1901, once the groundbreaking "
Electric Bioscope Cinematograph Moving Picture Show" came to Great Britain from continental Europe, the competition became enormous, as leading entrepreneurs strived to engage the audience with the largest, brightest, and loudest-possible presentation of this licensed "moving images" spectacle. James Crichton's
Bioscope No. 1 (1902/03) and
Bioscope No. 2 (1908) shows, which both proudly paraded his lavishly decorated Gavioli, were on the road around the same time as Sydney White's "Coliseum Bioscope" in South Wales, John A. Proctor with his "Royal Bioscope" in Nottinghamshire, and William Haggar's "Electric Coliseum," to name just a few. At the time,
[url=/artist/14705877]Gavioli & Co.[/url], officially
Société Des Anciens Établissements Gavioli, was the world's leading fairground organ manufacturer. With local branches in London and Manchester, the French company happily fulfilled dozens of orders for their massive, "cutting-edge" 110-key and 112-keyless mechanical organs.
The heyday of "mammoth" Gaviolis in the UK, however, was relatively brief. Within a decade, traveling cinema spectacles became obsolete with the propagation of permanent movie theaters; meanwhile, phonographs and other compact auto-reproduction devices arrived on the market as the next-generation technology, far superior to expensive, complicated, and massive mechanical organs. (Chrichton's "Great" Gavioli, for instance, stood at about 5.4×3 meters and weighed a whopping 4 tons, requiring a skilled full-time technician to keep it operational.) Thus, by the early 1920s, most owners repurposed their Gavioli organs — typically as a centerpiece for steam-powered "roundabouts," carousels, and gallopers, as well as "scenic railways" popular at the time; often, the instruments were reduced and converted to a more compact 98-key or 89-key function.
Sometime after 1912, James Chrichton sold his "Great Gavioli" to
Harry Hall (d. 1954), proprietor of roundabouts and joyrides in the East Midlands, who used it on a scenic railway operated by one of his companies,
Hall & Proctor (in partnership with John Albert Proctor from "Proctor Funfairs"). Eventually, Hall sold the organ to John Studt, who operated it on a switchback ride, and later to P. Phillips. In 1935, the organ's new owner, Steven Hadfield, decided only to use the Gavioli's decorated façade, passing the actual instrument to
Woolls Brothers, a prolific firm active in Hastings, East Sussex since at least the early 1930s, which installed it on the ex-
Hall & Proctor switchback. According to "
A Century of Tobers" (Vol 1, No. 2, January 1978) newsletter from the Fairground Association of Great Britain (FAGB), the organ was refurbished and downsized to a 110-key scale. (However, it contradicts the majority of other sources, which uniformly claim that this specific Great Gavioli was converted to
89-key.) Reportedly, the ride was taken out of service by 1937, and the organ was put in storage.
Around 1958,
Arthur Frederick Mills (1914—1991) from Rushden, Northamptonshire, acquired the 89-key organ for preservation. A reputable local entrepreneur and civil servant, Mills owned the successful "Express Dry Cleaning Works" company. He was, however, better known among enthusiasts as a distinguished collector of antique steam engines and other relevant fairground equipment; in the early 1960s, he co-founded the Fair Organ Preservation Society. Mills entrusted the Gavioli's refurbishing and subsequent ongoing maintenance to renowned organ builder,
Victor Henry Chiappa (1900—1993) of
Chiappa Ltd. in London. A series of critically acclaimed LP records were made on the Great Gavioli, such as
Fairground Melodies and Memories (1961) on City Of London,
Fairground Fantasia In Stereo (1970) on City Of London, and
Fun At The Fair - A Stereo Merry-Go-Round (1972) on City Of London. According to the FAGB's "
Century of Tobers" article, the Great Gavioli organ was authentically restored circa 1978 by one of the Show Organ Society members,
George Flynn (d. 1981) of Durham County. Subsequently, it was purchased by the Silcock family.
