The Organ was dedicated at Holy Cross on Mothering Sunday 1972 having originally been built in 1965 by Noel Mander for the  Michael Carnegie family on the Isle of Jersey. Built in the classical style it was offered to Holy Cross and made a gift to the church by Mrs Phyllis Marshall in memory of her husband.

 

It  replaced a Walker extension organ which was housed under the tower.  The new instrument also relied on some extension i.e. the use of one rank of pipes for more than one stop, and was placed over the priest's vestry with the console where the previous one had been in the Milgate Chapel.

 

Although a fine two manual instrument it had no aids to registration and no swell box, as was the custom during this period. This made accompanying services and other choral music quite an energetic activity often involving putting stops in with elbows or even a nose at times!

With the re-ordering of the church in 1986 the opportunity was taken to re-build, enlarge and reposition the organ. The work, carried out by F H Browne of Canterbury, involved enclosing the original Mander organ to form the Swell Organ and adding new pipes to form a Great Organ as well as adding to the Pedal Organ. As part of this work the positions of the organ and the console, now fitted with a swell pedal and pistons to aid registration, were reversed leaving them as they are today.

In 2012 the organ was in need of cleaning. The removal of pipework provided an opportunity to add two new stops; an oboe to the Swell and a 16 ft Open Diapason to the Pedal department. Because of lack of room in the organ case it was decided to make the latter electronic.

This has produced a very fine instrument capable of accompanying a full congregation as well as dealing with both choral and organ repertoire.