Mechanical Musical Museum & Bygones

The Mechanical Music Museum and Bygones at Cotton is a veritable Aladdin's cave, full of musical treasures. The roof rafters are adorned with hundreds of old gramophone records and horn gramophones which early in the last century brought music into many homes. On the floor beneath, the organs are housed, some with their pipes reaching to the rafters, fairground organs with the names of their famous makers emblazoned on them, reed organs, barrel organs, player organs and the gigantic café organ. Next to them, the street pianos produce their characteristic sound and the pianolas bring back to life the music of bygone days.

The smaller instruments are in abundance too - the musical boxes, polyphons and organettes charm the listener with their bright tuneful music and lurking in corners are the unusual; a musical Christmas tree, a musical chair, nursery toys and much, much more.

Also housed in the Museum is a mighty Wurlitzer theatre organ, which was built and originally installed by the Rudolph Wurlitzer Manufacturing Co. in the Stilwell Theatre, Brooklyn, New Jersey, USA in 1926. Three years later it was removed, shipped to England and installed in the Luxury Theatre in London, built by the legendary Jack Buchanan and which was later known as The Leicester Square Theatre. In the early 1980's it was installed in the Mechanical Music Museum at Cotton and rebuilt with an upright piano attachment added.

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