The Hammersmith organ restoration at Sacred Heart High School is powering ahead after a £247,788 grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund gave the project a major boost. The school is fundraising to bring back to working order the UK’s only pipe organ by Hippolyte Loret, a 19th-century Belgian craftsman, with the grant money also supporting education and community events.
Built in 1861 and installed in a Parisian convent, the organ was salvaged by a brave nun before asset strippers could seize it and smuggled across the Channel to England, according to the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham. It was reconstructed in the Hammersmith Road school’s chapel in 1904, where it fell into neglect over the years.
The instrument’s extraordinary story only came to light by chance. Dr William McVicker, Curator of Organs at the Royal Festival Hall, spotted a stop reading ‘Flute Pyramidale’ — a clue that established the Hammersmith instrument as the only example of Loret’s work in the UK and one of only a handful surviving anywhere in Europe.
The school is taking part in the Open House Festival, from 9.40am to 4pm, with a heritage trail and short free talks about the organ’s remarkable backstory and the Hammersmith organ restoration project. Beyond the two-year restoration itself, the funding will support a celebration of the school’s heritage as a centre of women’s activism dating back to 1669. The school’s own fundraising total now stands at £327,815.
Hammersmith organ restoration: what happens next
The organ is being dismantled and transported to Canterbury, where it will be restored by Mander organ builders before returning to Hammersmith in August 2027. Once it is back, the school plans public recitals and choral concerts, while a radio documentary about the organ’s history is in production. It is further good news for London schools after the capital’s pupils recently bucked the national decline in language learning — and for Hammersmith & Fulham, where a borough-wide reading campaign is working to put a book in every primary pupil’s hands.
