The Mighty Wurlitzer rising out of the floor played by a dapper organist resplendant with a smile was one of the glories of the pre-war age of cinemas.

Nowadays, cinemas are anonymous places where projectors mechanically whirr and stop and the curtain swishes to and fro all day long, with scarcely a hint of human involvement. In the days of silent movies, however, since there was no soundtrack on the film, the atmosphere was created "on the spot" by the pianist improvising a mosaic of mood music, often pieced together from excerpts lifted out of the popular classics.
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The cinema pianist was in due course replaced by the more chic, upmarket cinema organist, and the cinema organ par excellence was undoubtedly the Mighty Wurlitzer. It was in 1910 that the first Mighty Wurlitzer theatre organs were introduced, specifically designed for cinema music. These extraordinary pipe organs had between two and five keyboards. The Wurlitzer Hope - Jones Unit Orchestra, to give its full name, aimed to provide an entire orchestra under the feet and fingers of one player. It's organ pipes could imitate the sounds of trumpets, tubas, clarinets, oboes & much more. An array of real life percussion instruments such as cathedral chimes, xylophones, drums and occasionally even a piano were incorporated into the organ.

With the introduction of the talkies, the filmscore was born. Inevitably, the days of the Mighty Wurlitzer were numbered. Nowadays, however, there is a certain nostalgia for these old theatre organs and their distinctive sounds.

The Thursford collection houses one of the finest remaining Wurlitzer organs, in addition to one of the worlds largest collections of steam traction engines, fairground organs & rides and road vehicles from a bygone era. Robert Wolfe has been the resident organist at Thursford since 1981. He took this solo position at the age of 19. From early spring through to the autumn Robert draws large crowds to the museum where he performs daily concerts.

The Thursford Collection is currently having it's own website built and you will soon be able to access it from this page.

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