Trinity College Dublin Great upper case before restoration

The 1684 Great case and the 1705 Chair case were in appalling condition when we took the organ to pieces.  The Great case was top-heavy, and what internal stability there may have been had been removed when Telford introduced a new organ with its own support structure in 1839.  The cases had been taken to pieces, moved, and ‘repaired’ two or three times.  The Chair case had lost its organ and the roof, sides and back in 1839, so that the front was just a screen.  The Great impost had to take the weight of some very heavy pipework without much support inside, and was twisting and sagging, to the point where the front pipes were falling out from behind the pipe shades.