Henry Willis & Sons

The founder of the company, the eponymous Henry Willis, was nicknamed "Father Willis" because of his contribution to the art and science of organ building and to distinguish him from his younger relatives working in the firm.

He was a friend of Samuel Sebastian Wesley whom he met at Cheltenham, and who was instrumental in gaining for Willis the contract for his first work on a cathedral organ, at Gloucester, in 1847.

The Willis firm is regarded as the leading organ builder of the Victorian era, itself a time when both civic and religious commitment led to the construction of a large number of impressive buildings and other public works. During the Industrial Revolution many towns equipped themselves with imposing town halls, preferably with a Willis instrument of the symphonic organ style, and a substantial (and similarly equipped) church. Industrialists competed to endow the most lavish halls and instruments. The result was a convergence of both a very fine and technically proficient organ builder, and a substantial number of commissions for really exceptional instruments. This heritage continues with recent new instruments in Florence (Italy) and Auckland (New Zealand).

As well as large organs, from around 1860 the firm made compact and lower-cost instruments suitable for smaller spaces such as the chancels of village churches. These were called Scudamore organs after their proponent, John Baron, who was rector of Upton Scudamore, Wiltshire.

In March 1919, Henry Willis & Sons merged with another prominent firm of organ builders, Lewis & Co, and traded under the name of Henry Willis & Sons and Lewis & Company Ltd. until 1923 when the reference to Lewis was dropped. The firm moved into Lewis's works at Brixton and remained there until it was destroyed by bombing during the London Blitz in 1941. The firm acquired A. Hunter & Son of Clapham in 1937.