Oude Kerk, Katwijk aan Zee

The Church

The historical church was in use till the end of the last century. Because the church became too small the decision was made to build a new and larger church, the so called Nieuwe Kerk (= New Church). When this church was finished the old church ( = Oude Kerk) was sold to the fishfactory.
Till the end of the twenties the Oude Kerk was used to salt the fish and for repairs on the fishingnets. Unfortunately the Nieuwe Kerk with it's 1800 places became already too small. The Oude Kerk was bought back from the fishfactory and the church was restored and enlarged to 1100 places.

The Organ

In 1991 three organbuilders were invited to advise the church what to do with the old organ by Standaart (1923, 22IIP) which was in very bad condition. All three advised not to spent lots of money on this electo-pneumatic organ. A commision was formed around consultant Jaap van Rijn, organist of the large organ of the Nieuwe Kerk.

While the church was restored and enlarged this commision made a plan with two major points:

The existing oak case should be used and when needed enlarged in style.
The stoplist including a detailed discription of the organ as it should be build. Each organbuilder was not allowed to make changes. This was done to make a fair comparison between the organbuilders.

To built a mechanical tracker organ in the existing space was not an easy job, because the case is splitted in two parts by the roof construction. The "detached" console should be in the middle, facing the church. Use of an steelframe was needed because the existing casework nor the existing floor could carry any large point-weights.

The plan, drawn up by the commission, was send to five builders. Finally the contract was awarded to Van den Heuvel in May 1992. The organ was inaugurated on November 23th 1995.

Some details

The complete stop list.

Internal layout

When working on the final drawings of the organ the decision was made to change the roof construction above the organ. The Zwelwerk (Swell) was placed in the middle above the console which is devided by a lever of the roofconstruction. The shutters open on each side allowing the sound to be spreaded in both sides of the church. The Hoofwerk (Great) is devided also in C and C# sides and placed on both sides of the console and Zwelwerk. The pedal stops are located on the far left en right side of the organ. In total there are six bellows, for each devision two (C and C# sides).

Instruments | Oude Kerk, Katwijk aan Zee