Cork's incredible organ pops up again in Limerick
The newly refurbished Compton Organ on stage at University Concert Hall, Limerick.
“I wonder if it’s still there and if they have set it up so that its unforgettable tone can be heard again?” Questions posed by journalist Jo Kerrigan in a nostalgic piece in the Echo newspaper in January. The ‘it’ referring to the Compton theatre organ heard at the Savoy Cinema in Cork. The heyday of the silent-movie era had passed when six of John Compton’s innovative electric organs constructed in Nottingham were installed in theatres in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Belfast in the 1930s. But hearing the organ played before and during intermissions was still very much part of the cinema experience.
Bob Desmond from Capwell Road, Cork, recalls being enthralled at the cinema on Sundays as a boy in the 1940s. “Fred Bridgeman would play before the main feature on Sunday nights -the organ would rise up on a platform with the audience singing along as the words are displayed on the cinema screen.”
