Laurence Elvin, F.R.Hist.S.

Laurence Elvin was born in Lincoln in 1913; he spent his whole life in the city and served it well as a local historian. The war took him to India and Burma with the R.A.F., and he then worked for Lincoln City Education Department until 1963 when, through the good offices of his lifelong friend, Tom Baker, F.S.A., who had long recognized Elvin's worth as a historian, he was appointed Local Studies Librarian in the Lincoln City Libraries Department. Elvin established the Tennyson Research Centre and, a skilled photographer, built up a valuable pictorial archive

of historic buildings (some soon to be demolished to make way for developments), Lincoln street scenes, steam locomotives, railway stations, organs, boats, churches and telling portraits of local worthies. Arising from this archive, Elvin published four albums of photographs entitled Lincoln as it Was. Of equal importance to him as his researches into local history was his love of music, especially the pipe organ. His moderate keyboard skill was amply compensated by his enthusiasm for the instrument, and he was frequently to be seen in the Lincoln Cathedral organ loft during Sunday morning services. First and foremost a historian, he wrote an important series of books in the late sixties and seventies on organ builders of the past: Forster and Andrews, The Harrison Story, Some North Country Organ Builders and Bishop and Son, all minutely documented; the earlier titles are now collectors' items. For some fifty years Elvin contributed articles to The Organ and Musical Opinion and his last book, Pipes and Actions, appeared in 1994 when he was an octogenarian. He was a visiting lecturer at Sheffield Polytechnic, an Honorary Fellow of the Cambridge Society of Musicians, secretary of the Lincoln Choral Society and for sixteen years, until his retirement in 1993, Honorary Adviser on organs to the diocese of Lincoln. He died on 25 September 1995.