E. Wragg & Son

E. WRAGG AND SON OF NOTTINGHAM

by Colin Pykett

August 2003. Last revised September 2007.

“…a house gone here, a railway bridge no longer there, tree-lined roads unrecognisable…how we take things for granted … the present slips into the past almost unnoticed….”

Grenville Jennings

Wragg, the former Nottingham organ builder, has been described recently as “…a man whose [pneumatic] actions (ubiquitous throughout Nottinghamshire) must be the most sluggish in repetition ever made” [1]. The hyperbole is of course unhelpful and it only amplifies the unfairness of this remark, so it is appropriate to level the playing field a little. In doing this, the quotation at the head of this article is apposite in two ways: firstly it appeared in a preface to a collection of old picture postcards [5] of the area of Nottingham in which Wragg lived and worked for many years until his death in the 1960's, and some of the churches which contained his organs are pictured therein. Secondly it reminds us how important it is to ease the task of future historians by remembering that tomorrow's history is largely based on that mass of today's often humdrum information which is so seldom recorded. Should anyone wish to undertake a history of the organs of Nottingham and its surroundings during the twentieth century, they will have to devote a substantial part of it to the doings of E Wragg & Son whether they like it or not. In that event, hopefully this short article might prove useful.

The firm was founded by Ernest Wragg in the 1890’s after he had completed an apprenticeship with C S Lloyd, also of Nottingham. Interestingly, one of Lloyd’s employees around that time was the young John Compton. In due course Ernest took his son into the firm. He was J E Fenton Wragg, who continued working until his death in 1969 when the firm’s interests were acquired by Henry Groves. It is quite true that the Wraggs’ work was ubiquitous throughout the area to the extent that much of it still survives, indeed by the mid-20^th century it was never a surprise to find that a church in the area had an organ by Wragg. One supposes that this could make life rather dull for a local organ adviser however, both then and now. But there are usually good reasons in life generally why people overwhelmingly prefer the products of one firm in preference to others, so let us examine the situation a little further.

Given that the particular instrument at Epperstone which gave rise to the utterance quoted above was not removed until 1998, some thirty years after the firm ceased trading and many more since the organ was first installed, an alternative reading of events might conclude that its work was in fact pretty sturdy and reliable. It was also excellent value for money, a not inconsiderable matter for cash-strapped churches then as now. I can attest to this having seen some examples of the tenders submitted by Wragg for work in competition with other builders. One concerns Lady Bay parish church in the early ‘60’s, where they had built a pre-war two manual tubular pneumatic instrument. This was certainly not one of the “most sluggish in repetition ever made”, at least when I was organist and choir trainer there. The key and combination actions were prompt and reliable and the biggest, if trivial, disadvantage was the rather noisy pneumatic slider mechanisms in the small church. (For what it is worth, my prize for the slowest pneumatic action at that time has to go to the Lewis at St Luke’s, Battersea). The work tendered for at Lady Bay was in process of being duly considered when a more urgent intervention was required - someone had inconveniently left an open bag of cement under the air intake to the blower, damaging much of the action at a stroke. I well remember my state of panic having just arrived for a choir practice! The remedial work was carried out by Wragg.

Fenton Wragg was living in the Nottingham suburb of Carlton at the time of his death. The firm’s premises were not far away and were perched above what was then a railway cutting below the B686 leading out of Nottingham towards Southwell, at its junction with Porchester Road. The building looked as though it had been either an unusually ostentatious signal box or an unusually unassuming Nonconformist chapel because of its wood construction and Gothic design. By the time this note was first written (2003) both railway and building had long vanished. Some Wragg organs were of moderate size and with some notable features, such as the three manual electro-pneumatic instrument installed at St Paul’s church in Carlton-in-the-Willows (pictured left [6]) in 1937 which, among other things, contained a substantial amount of 18^th century pipework. The church itself is pictured on page 10 of [5] as it appeared in 1920. In 1998 BIOS (The British Institute of Organ Studies) examined this instrument at my suggestion, finding it worthy of retention because of the distinction of its ensemble and certain of its ranks [2]. Their report also noted that the organ was still in complete working order some 60 years after its installation. Independent information in my possession shows that, although it was overhauled in the early 1960’s (by Wragg), no major work had been done on it at the time of that report. This could be deduced because of the presence of the original cotton-covered wiring and many original components. The organ still survives and is in regular use in 2006. All this scarcely chimes with the impression that a naïve reader might gain from the remarks in [1]. It confirms again the durability and quality of Wragg's work.

Fenton Wragg also tended the four manual Nottingham Behemoths at St Mary’s church and the Albert Hall, both of which were important in the musical life of the city then as now. The former was a Romantic Walker, tonally glorious but in terminal mechanical decline and it was removed in the late ‘60’s [3]. However some idea of its magnificence can still be obtained from its smaller relative at another St Mary’s, at Portsea in Hampshire, which hopefully will be restored in due course. The organ at the Albert Hall was the recently resurrected Binns [4]. The then titulaires at these consoles, respectively Russell Missin and Fred Garnett, were scarcely likely to have welcomed an organ builder with the reputation implied by [1] because both organs had pneumatic actions. From them I learned at first hand the value of the work that Wragg actually did to keep these ailing instruments in speaking condition. At St Mary’s he had also re-modelled the choir organ [3], and his work at the Albert Hall was independently acknowledged recently [4]. He was also retained by the important city centre church of St Peter, where he had done major work in the 1950’s.

Fenton Wragg’s temperament had both irascible and flamboyant elements. The firm’s massive accumulation of work in the area kept him very busy, but he was always content to let you look over his shoulder provided you did not get in his way, and from such a man one can learn a lot. Before the second war the Wraggs were inventive and flexible in their approach to organ building, having designed and made much of their own electrical equipment such as reverser actions. As far as I am aware no account of the firm has been compiled. If there is a budding historiographer out there who is looking for a project, perhaps this is a suggestion that might fill the gap while there is still sufficient of its work remaining to flesh it out. The Wraggs were probably the major force in remodelling the organ landscape of Nottinghamshire and environs during the last century, and this fact alone calls for a dispassionate rather than a dismissive study.

References

1. P Hale, Organists’ Review, November 2001, p. 336

2. Private communication, BIOS, 1998.

3. "The Organs and Organists of St. Mary’s Church Nottingham", A Abbott and J Whittle, Rylands Press 1993. ISBN 0 9521157 0 0.

4. "The Restoration of the Binns Organ in the Albert Hall, Nottingham", D Butterworth, Organists’ Review, May 1996.

5. "Carlton, Netherfield and Colwick", Grenville Jennings, Reflections of a Bygone Age (publisher), Nottingham, November 1992, ISBN 0 946245 64 9.

6. I am indebted to the church for permission to use this picture of the organ as it appears on their website at http://www.stpaulscarlton.org/. Details of the organ are available from the National Pipe Organ Register at http://npor.emma.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi?Fn=Rsearch&rec_index=N13631.