St. Peter and St. Paul’s Church, Gosberton
What was a gallery, and what was its purpose?
At the west end of the nave was, at one time, a wooden gallery above the west door. Such galleries, known as ‘singing galleries’ or ‘West Galleries,’ were a raised platform, often at the west end of the church, where musicians and singers would perform during services. Gosberton Parish choir, formed in 1845, would have sung from the gallery, accompanied by a barrel organ operated in the mid-1800s by a Mr. George Russel. The barrel organ was a mechanical musical instrument that plays pre-set melodies. It utilised a wooden cylinder (barrel) with pins that, when rotated, activate levers to control airflow through organ pipes, producing music. The organ would have been manually operated by Mr Russell, by turning a crank that powered the bellows and rotated the barrel.
When was Gosberton’s gallery built?
We don’t know when it would have been erected, but probably not before 1700 – which is when such galleries became fashionable in English churches.
When was the gallery removed?
Galleries were particularly popular from the late 17th to the mid-19th centuries, often housing local village bands of instrumentalists and singers. The rise of organs and more formal choral traditions in the late 19th century led to the decline of West Galleries, with many being removed or repurposed in the mid-1800s. Such was the case here in St. Peter and St. Paul’s Church, when it was demolished in 1864 as part of a major restoration scheme in the church.
