EDGAR HENRY JENKINS
(1836–1924)

Edgar H. Jenkins was a British-born New Zealand organ builder.

Born in Poole in Dorset, England in 1836, Edgar Jenkins was apprenticed to the renowned London organ builder William Hill in 1850 and worked there until 1858, interrupted by military service during the Crimean War (1854-56).

Jenkins then moved to Europe and worked for Aristide Cavaillé-Coll from 1860-1862. During this time he was employed in Spain, working on a three-manual organ for the Basilica of Santa Maria del Coro in San Sebastian (1863) and an organ in Oyarzun. He then returned to London to work for William Hill.

In his early thirties, having worked for two of the leading 19th-century organ building firms, E.H. Jenkins emigrated to New Zealand in 1868 and built three instruments (1875, 1877 and 1879) before settling in Christchurch in 1880. There he installed the 1881 Hill & Son organ in the Anglican Cathedral.

Opening a factory in 1882, he built three organs and part of a fourth before his bankruptcy in 1884. Jenkins supervised the building of a large organ for the 1885 Wellington Exhibition, but most of his work remained predominantly tuning and installing.

In 1897 and 1903 he built two larger organs; a third begun in 1904 was interrupted by the renovation and moving of the 1881 Hill Christchurch Cathedral organ (1906).

In partnership with a young English organ builder, Herbert Brett, Jenkins relocated a large electric-action organ from the 1906-07 New Zealand International Exhibition, Christchurch to a city theatre. They also built a new organ in 1909, after which the partnership failed.

Jenkins’ last organ was completed in 1911, at the age of 75.

Jenkins used mostly New Zealand woods, importing ivory keys and Oregon and Sydney cedar for wooden pipes. Metal pipes were imported from Hill & Son in London and George Fincham in Melbourne.

E.H. Jenkins’ style of organ building was derivative of English organ building of the 1860s.

The most complete Jenkins organ in original condition, for the Lyttleton Orphanage (now Lyttleton Union Church), with a detached reversed console after Cavaillé-Coll, is otherwise identical in style to his others.

From an article by Dr Ronald G. Newton in The Organ: An Encyclopedia by Douglas Earl Bush and Richard Kassel.