R.G. Newton Organ Builder Limited

28/04/2026

The Anzac Day concert in the Hall of Memories was the first time the organ has been heard by the public for some years:

The Waitaki Boys’ High School Anzac Day Concert is back for its 11th year. The event will be back in the newly-restored Hall of Memories after...

28/04/2026

Our work at Waitaki Boys’ High School is almost complete!

Waitaki Boys’ High School rector Darryl Paterson (right) and organ builder Ron Newton stand together in the Hall of Memories as the final stages of...

19/09/2024

Geraldine News 19 September 2024 p5:

31/08/2024

https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/north-otago/%E2%80%98excited%E2%80%99-dismantle-school%E2%80%99s-pipe-organ

Dismantling a nearly 100-year-old pipe organ is a huge job. And with over 1300 individual pipes to carefully handle and pack away, the work by...

18/08/2024

We are very pleased to have been given the work of dismantling the 1931 Lawton & Osborne pipe organ in the Hall of Memories, Waitaki Boys’ High School, in Oamaru. The instrument will be packed and stored in containers on site, whilst the Hall is strengthened and renovated.

Hopefully we can keep the Hall a little tidier than Mr Osborne.

18/08/2024

It has been a delightful few weeks working in the beautiful Immaculate Conception church in Geraldine, cleaning and overhauling their Positive pipe organ. I will add more pictures as the work winds up this next week.

The organ is being moved to the left side of the gallery, away from the big window.

22/03/2024

Very pleased with the results of the completion of the installation of the 1902 Hathaway organ in a new house in Methven. Best possible location for this charming instrument. The pipes were repainted in our usual Resene metallic colours.

Hathaway was an associate of Richard Pearse, who was experimenting, inventing and patenting airplane and bicycle ideas at the time this instrument was built. They both played in local music groups.

06/11/2023

Some photos of other instruments on our round:

06/11/2023

We started the Spring tuning round in the North Island at the end of September with the overhaul of the 1980 G. Croft & Son organ in the chapel of Sacred Heart College, Glen Innes. The organ had been greatly underpowered and poorly regulated, and plastic grommets in the mechanical action had been perishing for many years. With a larger blower, tonal regulation and repaired action, the organ now sounds terrific. The sun-bleached mahogany case was also treated, and now looks great, too.

20/01/2023

Our big job in January, starting in the New Year, was to clean and overhaul the 1878 Farrell/1972 Strachan organ in St. John the Baptist church in Rangiora. St. John’s was the Newton family church back in the 1950s, and my father Ron, at age 16, was licensed here as the youngest lay reader in the Diocese.

The organ had originally been installed in the west end then moved into the new 1882 transept, before Strachan moved it into the new transept gallery. The organ blower is situated outside near a busy road, the wooden church roof is partially open to the atmosphere and, as with other Strachan jobs we have worked on, the original instrument had not been cleaned and repaired thoroughly before, so there was an enormous amount of “windblown dust and dirt” to be cleaned out.

We wrote about Christopher Farrell and the Rangiora organ in “Organa Cantuariensia” and the PhD thesis on New Zealand organ building previously, and although we have had the maintenance of this instrument for a number of years, it was a pleasure to finally investigate it in more detail.