In 1924, the internationally renowned contralto Dame Clara Butt(-Rumford) donated a new organ to the West Ham Central Mission for their recently completed building in London's East End. Best known as Elgar's muse for Land of Hope and Glory, Dame Clara was the first popular artist to undertake modern style international tours to the United States of America and Australasia.

Dame Clara chose a local organ builder, Robert Spurden-Rutt of Leyton, to materialize her vision for an organ for the great new church. One of the larger instruments he had built to date, Spurden-Rutt used electro-pneumatic action for the first time for this commission.

The organ was used regularly until the end of the the twentieth century but time and damp were taking their dreadful toll. As the millennium turned, the once great pipes were mainly silent - breathing again briefly for an episode of Songs of Praise.

Undetected vandalism on the church roof caused water ingress of devastating proportions while pigeons nested among the ranks. Careless storage against the trombone saw preventable damage rendering the pipes useless. When the organ was surveyed for the National Pipe Organ Register in 2011 the surveyor's melancholy remark was "Organ in bad state of repair". https://npor.org.uk/survey/E01970

2022 saw the centenary of the Memorial Church building and a new minister determined that "Clara" would sing again in time for the celebrations. Staff from Bishop and Son drained the water and evicted the pigeons before recovering as much of the instrument as physically possible. For the celebration service itself, Lyndon Ford played Fantasia on 'Le Carillon du Verre' - a piece written especially for the Memorial Church organ by Donald Preece in 2011 with reference to the memorial bells which give the church its name.

Since September 2022 "Clara" has been used regularly in morning worship at the church - with a short break over Christmas 2023 as the damaged blower was repaired and reinstated by the Duplex company. However, back from the dead she might be, in good health she is not. While now in tune, several ranks remain unplayable and the whole instrument is still suffering from the legacy of damp and neglect and the church has been quoted a £130,000 bill for a rebuild. Lack of action now will mean further deterioration from which the instrument might not be able to recover.

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