Some 15 years ago, we built a small chamber organ for Peter Maxwell Davies in his crofter's cottage on the Orkney island of Hoy (famous for its "Old Man", the monolithic stone on the coast only first climbed, I believe, within our living memory, but now climbed regularly). Max's crofter's cottage on Hoy was about as small as you could get. Originally it had been two rooms, one of which was the kitchen. These crofters cottages were for whole families. The family would sleep in a large cupboard-like enclosure (with doors that closed when everybody was in bed) to keep warm. The walls were made with flat stones hewn roughly to shape piled on top of each other without any mortar. So the wind whistled through, and it must have been unbearably cold. Heating was with peat, of course, and there were two chimneys, one at each end of the house, down which also came the wind and the rain. Life in these houses must have been extraordinarily hard. The climate is not particularly hospitable and yet, on the main island of the Orkneys, is one of the oldest settlements (in remarkably original condition) of the whole of Europe. So the cottages were small for a reason, to try and keep warm and dry (the latter a pretty forlorn hope in fact). The organ therefore had to be small as well and of such a shape that it would fit under the eaves of the cottage which fell to about 4' 6" where the roof met the walls.

The key compass was 8ft F to top f, 49 notes as there was not really room for more. Peter Maxwell Davies sometimes uses the organ for playing through the music he has composed but (surprisingly to some) he actually does all his composition in his head. So he uses the organ for pleasure rather than actual composition. Oh yes, and the cottage was then about 1 1/2 miles from the end of the road, and it had to be carried the rest of the way, which was another good reason for making it small.