Henry Willis

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Henry Willis, known as "Father Willis" (27 April 1821 – 11 February 1901), was an English organ player and builder. He is regarded as the leading organ builder of the Victorian era, and his company Henry Willis & Sons is still in business.

Willis was born in London and learned to play the organ from George Cooper and Thomas Attwood. In 1835 he began a seven-year apprenticeship with organ maker John Gray, where he invented the manual and pedal couplers he used later. After his apprenticeship he worked in Cheltenham with Wardle Evans, a maker of free reed instruments, and he credited this time with helping his skill in reed voicing. He helped rebuild Gloucester Cathedral’s organ in 1847 with Samuel Sebastian Wesley, a turning point that boosted his fame. For the Great Exhibition of 1851 he built the largest organ on display, with 70 speaking stops, and introduced new ideas like piston buttons for automatic stop selection and Barker lever action. After the Exhibition, the organ was rebuilt at Winchester Cathedral in 1854 with 49 stops.

Willis continued to grow in fame, creating a 100-stop organ for St George’s Hall, Liverpool, in 1855, in collaboration with Wesley. His career included major instruments at Alexandra Palace, the Royal Albert Hall, and St Paul’s Cathedral, and he built or rebuilt around 1,000 organs in total, including many cathedrals such as Canterbury, Carlisle, Coventry, Durham, Edinburgh, Gloucester, Exeter, Salisbury, Winchester, and more. One famous instrument at Windsor Castle’s St George’s Hall was destroyed by fire in 1992. His last major project was St Bees Priory in 1899, which he personally voiced.

Willis also served as an organist at several churches: Christ Church, Hoxton (1835); St John-at-Hampstead (from the mid-1850s); Christ Church, Hampstead (1852–1859), where he built the organ; and the Chapel of Ease in Islington (now St Mary Magdalene) for about 30 years until 1895.

He married Esther Maria Chatterton in 1847; after her death in 1893 he married her sister, Rosetta, in 1894, which was against the law at the time. He died in London in 1901 and is buried at Highgate Cemetery. His instruments are found around the world, celebrated for reed voicing and skilled craftsmanship. The Willis family continued organ building for four generations until 1997. The company, Henry Willis & Sons, Ltd., founded in 1845, still makes organs in Liverpool.