Barrel Organ

The Alkmaar ‘Barrel Organ’ (actually a barrel piano) was wheeled all over Bath, through its streets, round the football pitch at Bath City FC, and taken to surrounding villages, all to help raise funds for the Appeal. 

It became rather famous, regularly mentioned in local press reports.

The venerable Alkmaar instrument has not been played for decades.  But here is a recording of a similar barrel piano, which gives an idea of the sort of sound Bathonians would have heard as Jimmie Wills and his friends in the Bath Rotary Club and ARP collected money in 1945.

Click on the picture and this will start a Youtube video of a similar instrument.

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