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Pictured below at the console of St Asaph Cathedral organ is our founder, Rev'd D Quentin Bellamy MA BMus
How CNEWOCA came into being.
One very useful thing about being a Vicar with a brainstorm of an idea to establish a new Organists' & Choir-masters' Association is that you can use your own church for the first meeting, and if nobody turns up then you can quietly switch out the lights and go home! And this was just the thought in mind when in March 1998 a notice was placed in local papers, announcing the formation of the North East Wales Organists' & Choirmasters' Association. Certainly there was nothing going on in the area, the Chester & District Association members had decided to call it a day in 1990 and the North Wales Association had been struggling for years with an ever-decreasing membership.
A visit from Raymond Harper brought the suggestion that Chester be added to the North East Wales district and hence CNEWOCA was born! The first meeting took place at The Church of St Martin of Tours, Llay and there was an attendence of 8 persons. We were off! It was swiftly discovered that Saturdays were useless for such meetings, and we landed on our regular night of the last Monday in each month.
The Association has now grown to around 100 members making it one of the largest IAO affiliated associations in the land. Very shortly a new area is to be formed (under the banner of CNEWOCA) and this will cater for our growing membership in the North Wales Coastal Area.
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CNEWOCA is blessed in that there are many notable pipe organs locally - including two cathedral organs!
On this page there is a list of these instruments and links to details of their history and specifications. It is our intention to provide extensive records of the pipe organs of our area, and in the course of the next few months this page will be significantly developed. Pictured above is the splendid new case of the JJ Binns/George Sixsmith pipe organ recently installed at the Church of St Werburgh, Chester. Just below is the console of the new organ at the Church of St Martin of Tours, Llay, built in 2003/04 by CNEWOCA member, Keith Edwards.
The files are published in PDF format so you will need Adobe Acrobat reader to download them.
Chester Cathedral
Saint Asaph Cathedral
St John Baptist, Aldford
Holy Trinity Church, Blacon
St Boniface, Bunbury St Francis of Assisi, Chester
St John the Baptist, Chester
St Mary's Church, Handbridge
Wesley Methodist Church, Chester
All Saints' Church, Gresford
St Martin of Tours, Llay Mold Parish Church St Alkmund's Church, Whitchurch
Top: The Organ of St Werburgh's RC Church, Chester
Above Right: The Church of St Martin of Tours, Llay
(this photo of the "new" console was taken in August 2003 - just after it had been delivered to the Church).
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Above is the new organ case of St Asaph Cathedral, whose historic William Hill pipe organ was rebuilt in 2000 by Wood of Huddersfield.
Below is the glorious casework of the organ of Chester Cathedral.
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