After completing his early education at Holy Trinity School, Halifax, Peter began his long and varied working career in the early 70's, as an apprentice electrician; working on projects such as the Drax power station, numerous housing developments and sports centres.

 

After qualifying as an electrician, Peter then decided to return to studying electronics, this time at Huddersfield Polytechnic. Being inspired by the musical creations of Rick Wakeman, Mike Oldfield, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Jon Lord of Deep Purple and others, he studied to be an electronic music engineer. His first post after graduation, was as an engineer with ‘The Organ Loft’, a company based in Huddersfield, but with shops in Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Ripon and St. Albans, where he co-ordinated the service department.

​He dealt with all the main brands of that period: Lowrey, Farfisa, Gem, Conn, Wurlitzer, Crumar, Technics and of course VISCOUNT, which even then were very popular in Churches and in homes, where organists practice.

 

After The Organ Loft ceased trading in 1981, he began the exciting journey of self-employment; continuing to service the needs of the customers, whilst simultaneously, travelling to Nottingham on a regular basis to support David Hamilton, of Conn Organs, here in the UK; checking and despatching stock imported from the USA.

During this busy period Peter also spent one day a week travelling to Lancashire to Johannus Organs, run at this time by Martin Coleam, where he found himself once again in the position of checking out stock and repairing instruments that had been brought in for service.

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Later in the 80's came the next challenge, dealing with Wersi Organ customers from an office within Wersi North, Barnsley. His duties were to aid customers who were building their own instruments and fault finding their mistakes (not an easy task) along with building instruments for customers who did not want to tackle the specifics and complexities of such a job. After the German company’s franchise ended in London and Barnsley, Peter went again into supporting customers throughout the country, completing those kits that customers had started and fault finding.

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At the end of the 90's Peter received a call out of the blue from Trevor Daniels, brother of Paul, who, a decade previously, had been the importer of Crumar Organs. He was invited to a meeting in London with Roy Scott who was establishing a new company called ‘Wersi UK’, with the intention of being the importer of a new range of Wersi products called the OAS range, a range of instruments designed round a Windows based computer.

​Peter was invited to join the company and as a result became service manager, once again travelling around the country carrying out upgrades as new software became available and supporting exhibitions.

On the sad death of Roy in 2005, Peter took over at Wersi UK on a solely service and repairs basis and as a major coup, successfully convinced Blackpool Tower to have on hire Wersi's flagship organ, The Louvre Organ, which was a beautiful, white, 3 manual instrument, placed centre stage in the Tower Ballroom. This kept Peter busy for many years-usually at night-carrying out maintenance and upgrades!

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In 2012 Peter had established himself with ‘Bogdan Organs’ in Leigh, Lancashire (initially to assist in repairing a VISCOUNT in a Church in the county) where Anthony Bogdan, the main Viscount dealer for the North of England and Peter built a good working relationship; carrying out repairs, service, sales and installations and where Anthony and Peter jointly surveyed  the proposed works to be carried out: Peter would then carry out that work once passed by the PCC, DAC etc, with Anthony carrying out the voicing of the instruments. This also led onto Peter carrying out the occasional repair, installation and hire set-up for David Mason, managing director of Viscount Organs UK in Bicester, Near Oxford. The Church theme continued, with Peter working closely with Peter Prestidge, service manager, in assisting in such magnificent installations as York Minster and Selby Abbey.

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So, throughout the years, VISCOUNT ORGANS and other makes, have contributed to a huge and successful part of Peter's life, in Churches, homes, crematoriums, music and private schools, chapels and wherever he may be called.

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