(b ?London; d London, 7 June 1758). English builder of organs, harpsichords and spinets. He married Esther (or Hester) Brown on 29 December 1720 at St James’s, Clerkenwell, London. Handel, in a letter to Jennens dated 30 September 1749, wrote, ‘I very well approve of Mr. Bridge who without any Objection is a very good Organ Builder’.
Bridge’s largest organ, built in 1730 for Christ Church, Spitalfields (see Organ, fig.38; specification no.23 in Sumner) had, besides two Open Diapasons, two Principals on the Great, a Larigot, four reeds on the Great, three on the Swell and four on the lower set of keys including a French Horn from d, a stop introduced by Renatus Harris in his design for St Dionis Backchurch in 1722. This stop, the variety of reed stops, the Larigot, the regular use of a Tierce, the chorus mixtures with from five to eight ranks, the five-rank Cornet on the Great and the use of communication derive directly from the French style of Harris and it is almost certain that Bridge was apprenticed to him. Much of the original Christ Church organ survives, despite a rebuild in the 19th century, and in 1997 a thorough restoration of the instrument was begun by William Drake. Bridge frequently used two standard contemporary designs for his cases: the beautiful ‘curtain flat’ design with ogee-shaped flats in plan view, as at Spitalfields, Deptford, St George-in-the-East and Enfield, and the design with two gable-shaped upper flats, as at Old Street (now St Giles Cripplegate) and Shoreditch. On a number of occasions between 1733 and 1742 he appears to have built and worked on organs in collaboration with Abraham Jordan (Old Street and Exeter Cathedral). After his death in 1758, the business was continued at the same address by his son-in-law George England.
Bridge built organs in the following locations now in the London area: St Luke’s, Chelsea (1720; case now in Holsworthy Parish Church, Devon); Christ Church, Spitalfields (1730; cost £600; case, some chests, action and much pipework survive); St Paul’s, Deptford (1730; case survives); St Bartholomew-the-Great (1731); St George-in-the-East (1733; destroyed 1940); St Luke’s, Old Street (1733, with Jordan; the remains incorporated into the new organ at St Giles Cripplegate); Cuper’s Gardens, Lambeth (1738–40); the Hall of the Worshipful Company of Parish Clerks (1737; a virtually unaltered organ until its destruction in World War II); Marylebone Gardens (1740); St Anne’s, Limehouse (1741; burnt 1851); St Andrew’s, Enfield (1752–3; empty case survives); St Leonard’s, Shoreditch (1757; badly damaged during World War II; original console with black keys and sandwich sharps still in west gallery; case restored and organ rebuilt with electric action and detached console by Mander, 1951); Spa Fields Chapel, Clerkenwell; St James’s, Clerkenwell (moved to Beccles, Suffolk, in 1796); and the parish churches of Paddington and Eltham. He also built organs at St Mary of Charity, Faversham, Kent (1754; case survives); Trinity Church, Newport, Rhode Island (1733; case survives; console survives in the Newport Historical Society collection); and the King’s Chapel, Boston (1756; case survives; some pipework is found in the rebuilt organ of the Methodist church, Schuylerville, New York); and (with Jordan) he completely rebuilt the organ at Exeter Cathedral within the Loosemore cases (1742). He also did a major rebuilding of the organ at Worcester Cathedral (1752), and built an entirely new organ within the Pease cases at Canterbury Cathedral (1752–3; cost £480).
R. Russell: ‘The Organs of Christ Church, Spitalfields’, The Organ, xix (1939–40), 113–17
A. Niland: ‘The Organ at St. Luke’s Church, Old Street, London’, The Organ, xxxi (1951–2), 180–85
W.L. Sumner: The Organ: its Evolution, Principles of Construction and Use (London, 1952, enlarged 4/1973/R)
B. Matthews: The Organs and Organists of Exeter Cathedral (Exeter, 1964)
B. Owen: ‘Two Richard Bridge Organs in New England’, The Organ, lxviii (1989), 113–23
N.M. Plumley: The Organs of the City of London (Oxford, 1996)
GUY OLDHAM, NICHOLAS PLUMLEY