An organ which was the first to be installed in a British cinema and was last played in 1929 is languishing in a Kent museum looking for a new home.
It is currently in a many bits under the care of the Hall Place museum in Foots Cray.
It used to be the pride of the Electric Coliseum Cinema, which was built in 1912 on the corner of Green Lanes and St Ann's Road in Harringay, London.
The picture house was equipped with an organ, the first to be installed in any cinema in the UK.
It changed to the Coliseum Cinema at around the end of the 20s, and by the start of the 30s talkies started, which rendered the organ all but redundant.
The last time it was played was in 1929.
It was a 2Manual 17 stop organ, believed to have been manufactured by T Jones, which had three couplers.
It was a straight church type organ.
The organ chamber was located to the left of the screen.
Now it needs a new home to preserve the valuable piece of cinematic history.
Museum officer Vicky Nutt, said: “We have it our stores in Foots Cray.
“We have been looking for a new home for it for quite some time, along with some other possible options.
“We don’t have room to assemble it, and it is essentially in bits. It is fairly old and rare organ.
“We have looked at various options at various points for getting somewhere for it.”
So far the search for a new owner or home has failed, but the experts are not giving up hope and say it is available for free to a serious collector who can bring it back to life.
It arrived with Hall Place in the 80s, but the exact history since it left the Coliseum is still largely shrouded in mystery.
Despite not being used, the organ stayed in place during the cinema’s various transformations until it closed in June, 1961, with Tony Curtis in Who Was That Lady? playing it out.
It became a bingo hall until 1977 then a furniture store and on to a gay nightclub popular with The Weather Girls and George Michael.
These too didn’t last, and the derelict building was knocked down in 2000.
At some stage during all the changes, and it seems no-one quite knows when, the organ was removed.
Houses now stand on the site, known at the Coliseum.
POSTED: 06/09/2009 16:00:00
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