The Famous "Travelling" Organ

The most tangible legacy of this connection involves a historic chamber organ—one of the oldest surviving pipe organs in Britain—built around 1740 (or possibly as early as the 1680s) for the Choristers' Practice Room at Magdalen College, Oxford. 

When Magdalen College paid for the new Horsington church in 1860, they gifted this historic instrument to the village. Over the subsequent decades, the organ moved between multiple local parishes: 

Source: slha.org.uk

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• Magdalen College, Oxford (Until 1860)

• Horsington (Gifted in 1860)

• Scrivelsby (Moved after Horsington no longer required it)

• Stixwould

• Thornton (Currently resides preserved at St Wilfrid’s Church. See photo right) 

  Source: National Churches Trust​

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A. F. Garratt 2026