Michael John Gillingham, C.B.E, M.A. LL.B.

Michael Gillingham was born in Yeovil on 26 June 1933 into a family of Plymouth Brethren - an unpromising start for the Anglican churchman, musicologist and fine art dealer he was to become. When he won a scholarship to Yeovil School his headmaster, Denys Thompson, recognized Gillingham’s precocious intelligence and stretched his mind. His history master was also a strong influence and set him on the road to studying church architecture, a subject complemented by secret organ lessons, since his music could not be taken into the family home. A double scholarship to Cambridge was almost a foregone conclusion and, at the age of seventeen, Gillingham went up to Corpus Christi College to read history and then law. He tried law as a profession and also banking but his strict religious background held him back and finally he found a niche with fellow-Brethren, the art-dealers Spinks, where he learnt his trade, specializing in oriental antiquities. However, Gillingham soon replaced the puritanical dogma in which he had been brought up with the more liberal doctrines, and richer heritage, of the Church of England, of which he became a communicant. This blessed release enabled him to explore Anglican churches and their contents as well as to play the organs which were increasingly absorbing him. He was a member of the Organs Advisory Committee of the Council for the Care of Churches from 1967-91 and it was his outstanding contribution to the restoration of the seventeenth-century organ at St Michael’s, Framlingham, in 1968 that led to invitations to advise on instruments throughout the country, including the restoration of the organ case in Gloucester Cathedral in 1971. Gillingham was a founding chairman of the British Institute of Organ Studies in 1976, continuing in office until 1983; was elected an honoray fellow of the Royal College of Organists in 1986 and was for many years organist of St James, Clerkenwell. He was a member of the Advisory Board for Redundant Churches from 1979-89 and chairman from 1989 until his death; a member of the Westminster Abbey Architectural Advisory Panel and of Chichester Cathedral Fabric Committee from 1990-9. In 1979 Gillingham and his friend, the late Donald Findlay, acquired a near-derelict, five-bay early-Georgian house in Spitalfields and together embarked on an ambitious rescue operation, resulting in one of London’s most magnificent eighteenth-century houses complete with contemporary furniture, furnishings and pictures. They were also, naturally, closely involved with the long-running programme of restoration at nearby Christ Church, designed by Hawksmoor, where Gillingham was the last person to play its eighteenth-century organ before it was closed in the 1960s. This was, of course, largely voluntary work and Gillingham’s day job was as a fine art dealer, specialising in oriental ceramics, jade, ivories and furniture. John Sparks of Mount Street, of which Gillingham was a director from 1976 until it closed in 1991, was a meeting place for the rich, often eccentric, collectors and connoisseurs whose company he relished and whose custom he worked hard to keep and develop. Donald Findlay’s sudden death in 1998 was a mortal blow from which Gillingham never completely recovered. Together they had restored their house, lavished hospitality on their friends in beautiful surroundings of their own creation and shared many interests, not least their devotion to the Anglican church. Nevertheless, Gillingham made a tremendous effort to recover his spirits and, only three weeks before his death, he took over as chairman of the London Diocesan Advisory Committee. He did not live to continue his good work and died suddenly in the London Hospital on 22 October 1999. His funeral was held at St Andrew, Holborn, one of his favourite churches, and his ashes interred at Woodyer’s unusual Tractarian church at Evenley, Northamptonshire; Gillingham was writing its history when he died.