This Directory aims to list every organ builder who ever worked in the British Isles, from the earliest times to the middle of the twentieth century.
The information given is basic – names, dates, locations, addresses, cross references – with a list of sources from which the information is derived.
The compiler (David Wickens) has used the work of Andrew Freeman as a starting point – in particular, two (of many) subdivisions of his work: the Records of British Organ Builders, published in two parts, and a card index compiled during the 1920s. This material – and much else of Andrew Freeman’s – has been deposited in the British Organ Archive by Bernard Edmonds who has considerably extended the scope of Freeman’s work with research of his own, which has also been made available to the compiler. These two scholars (whose work spans the whole of the twentieth century) have laid the foundations of this Directory. It is fitting, therefore, that their names should be attached to it.