Liverpool - Rushworth & Dreaper Stores Whitechapel, 1930 - Museum repro postcard

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  • Picture / Image:  Rushworth and Dreaper Store in 1930. This was a famous music shop in Whitechapel. They also made organs. From archive photo.
  • Publisher:  National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside (Stewart Bale Archive). c.1980s/early 1990s
  • Postally used:  no
  • Stamp:  n/a
  • Postmark(s): n/a
  • Sent to:  n/a
  • Notes & Key words:  This is a MODERN card with an old picture. 

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NOTE: All postcards are sent in brand new stiffened envelopes which I have bought for the task. These are specially made to protect postcards and you may be able to re-use them. In addition there are other costs to sending so the above charge is not just for the stamp!

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Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :

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Rushworth and Dreaper are a firm of organ builders based in Liverpool, England[1]

The firm was established in 1828 by William Rushworth. It went into voluntary liquidation in November 2002.

Sad musical memories Aug 4 2005 Daily Post

It was one of Liverpool's great names. Now two Rushworth brothers reflect on their family business and its sad end. David Charters reports.

ONCE much of the Mersey sound belonged to one family. Theirs was the music of God, reaching for heaven through pipes, filled with melody by the parish organist, swaying on the wide stool, as he shut his eyes in rapture, pressing the keys and pumping the pedals.

Here on earth, it has trembled the aisles, down which countless brides have stepped to Mendelssohn's Wedding March, smiling with the promise of new life.

Sadly, coffins, carried on broad shoulders, also have passed the same way to the slow-stepping tones of Chopin's Funeral March.

So it was that an illustrious company of organ-makers sounded the span of life for thousands of Merseyside people.

In this, the 150th anniversary year of the Daily Post, older readers may remember how advertisements for Rushworth's regularly appeared on the top left hand corner of the front page, often topping stories of huge importance.

In addition to making some of the world's finest organs, the family had a chain of retail shops, selling musical instruments and records.

Now two of the Rushworth brothers are telling us their family story that began in premises in Islington in 1828.

Alastair Rushworth, 60, and his brother, Richard, 56, both from Wirral, are the fifth generation of the family on Merseyside. Alastair, a qualified organ-builder, joined the company in 1964 and was managing director of the organ side when it closed in 2004. Richard was on the accountancy side from 1979 to 1994.

William Rushworth, who arrived here from Yorkshire, founded the family business. "I think he would have been a fairly down to earth, honest type, with an inherent gift of craftsmanship, particularly wood-working," says Alastair.

Alastair, Richard and their other brother David, 62, (managing director of the retailing side when it closed in 1998), were brought into the company by their father James.

"My father thought that, if you had to do a job, you had to do it properly," says Alastair, a father of two.

After all, he joined a business that supplied organs to churches and cathedrals in Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil and other countries, as well as the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool Parish Church, Westminster Central Hall, London; hundreds of parish church on Merseyside and across the country, cathedrals, colleges and leading public schools, including Fettes in Edinburgh, attended by Tony Blair.

"I remember being led into the organ works on my first day as an apprentice," Alastair continues. "I donned an apron and started doing the most lowly things like planing up a piece of wood. I was eventually allowed to work on the pipes themselves, making sure that they were all speaking the right note with an even tone. It was a bit like training six or seven choirs at the same time to get them all doing the right thing.

"Then it was decided that I should know what was going on on the continent, particularly Holland where there was a leading organ-builder.

"The first organ I created myself was for Mold Parish Church, North Wales."

From Islington, the organ-building business moved to Great George Street in the early 20th century. In 1972, they moved for the final time to premises in St Anne Street.

In the 1960s, the retail division which, some 40 years earlier, had joined with Dreaper's, sellers of pianos and other musical instruments, moved from Islington to Whitechapel. The Beatles were among their customers.

At its height, Rushworth and Dreaper had branches in Liverpool, Birkenhead, Southport, Altrincham, Manchester and Chester. But a drop in the sale of records and musical instruments, combined with rises in the rents on their shops, led to their end.

Ironically, the final blow to the company's organ-building came from what had seemed to be its most promising deal.

"It was a whopping commission," says Alastair. "It would have been our biggest contract ever - £500,000 with the Ministry of Arts and Culture, an Italian government department, for their headquarters in a beautifully-restored monastic building on the banks of the River Tiber in Rome."

The company devoted all its efforts to this project for a new organ. But alarm bells began to ring in October 2003. "We were all ready to start but, at the 11th hour, the first payment still had not come through," he says..

"The starting date had been fixed for a month ahead, the design had been accepted and the accommodation for the staff had been sorted out. Two-thirds of the half million was ready as a deposit."

However, under the Italian system, government money not spent by late in the year has to be reassessed for the following year. This meant that Rushworth's would have had to re-apply for the contract.

"The two thirds of the half million pounds was out of the window," says Alastair.

"A contract like that was going to take all our skills and staff, so we had been telling our potential customers in the UK, 'Sorry we can't see you for another year, do come back and we'll keep in touch with you'.

"We just had nothing else for our staff to do. It was a disaster, a tragedy, that we weren't able to carry out the Italian organ, especially as we had a flood of orders coming in from Nigeria for cathedral organs."

The company had to call in the accountants. But many of their old craftsmen still tune and repair Rushworth's organs all over the UK.

It was a sad end to a business. At one time, it had employed almost 100 organ staff nationwide and 30 in Liverpool. At the close, only 12 were left it Liverpool.

Richard, who used to sing in the Liverpool Philharmonic Choir, met Sir Paul McCartney when he was presenting his orchestral opus, Liverpool Oratorio in 2000.

"He remembered our shop from his early days," says Richard. "Our father came home one night and said he had just met this group called the Beatles. He imported some guitars from Chicago especially for them."