X-Nico

2 unusual facts about Henry Willis


Canterbury Cathedral

It was built in 1886 by Henry Willis and subsequently rebuilt by the same firm in the mid 20th century.

St. Mary's Cathedral, Kuala Lumpur

The pipe organ installed in the church is a secondhand one built in 1898 by Henry Willis, the famous English organ maker who also made the organ for St Paul's Cathedral in London and the original Grand Organ of the Royal Albert Hall.


St Mary's Church, Ewell

A fire in 1973, started by the explosion of the church's central heating boiler, destroyed the North Aisle and everything in it, including an organ built in 1865 by "Father" Henry Willis, except a print of The Light of the World by famous painter and local resident William Holman Hunt, who painted the original by the disused gunpowder mills in Kingston Road.


see also

Edward Willis

Ted Willis, Baron Willis (Edward Henry Willis, 1914-1992), British television dramatist