The organist who almost got that sinking feeling in a Jarrow church

The organist at St Paul’s Church in Jarrow was happily playing the organ at the church just as he had done for years.

Dry rot was eating the floor away

But in 1968, it all changed when a chance discovery saved Syd from disaster.

An observant verger noticed a radiator leak behind the organ and went to investigate. That was when the verger and Syd found the whole floor was rotten and ready to give way.

Every Sunday for years Syd had been playing - unaware that the floor might give way beneath him and his 20-tonne organ.

‘I could have disappeared into the ground with the organ on top of me at any moment’

For while the sacred harmonies had been echoing among the rafters, dry rot was eating away the floor.

“I thought it was a joke at first, ” said Syd in 1968. “Then I learned that I could have disappeared into the ground with the organ on top of me at any moment. It was frightening.

“It might have been like the old cinema organs - disappearing into the earth at the end of the show.

‘It must have been ready to go for years’

“It would have been dramatic, but I’m glad it didn’t happen.”

The organ was put into the church - parts of which date back to AD685 - in the first years of the 20th century.

Experts who examined the floor on which the 60-year-old instrument stood, found the whole area was unsafe.

And workmen moved in to jack the organ off the ground and lay concrete beneath it.

Rock and roll at the Cross Bar Club

The rector of St Paul’s, the Rev H Saxby, said in 1968: “It must have been ready to go for years, but I had no idea anything was wrong until now.”

It wasn’t the only church music which was in the Shields Gazette news that year.

The Cross Bar Club at Westoe Baptist Church Youth Club, in South Shields, was going down a storm.

“We think Elvis, Buddy, Little Richard and Bill Haley cannot be beaten, ” said Peter Elliott, 19, at the time.

“We play their records constantly at our club, and we would not think of playing anything else.”

Tell us about the music memories you have from South Shields in the 1960s by emailing [email protected]