Business History

By the time that Sweetland had completed his apprenticeship, probably in the mid-1840s, there was little work to be had in the trade. Sherborne, his apprentice master, ¹ was still working, having completed organs at Chudleigh (Devon) and Lower Cam (Glos.) in 1844, ² Marshfield (Glos.) in 1845, ³ Coalpit Heath, ⁴ Wotton-under-Edge (Glos.) ⁵ and Warminster (Wilts) Independent Chapel ⁶ in 1846 and Nailsea (Somst) ⁷ and Bromham (Wilts.) ⁸ in 1848. He was said to be self-taught and to have made his own pipes. ⁹ He later moved to Sunderland and Sweetland, having an offer to build an organ in Bath and with some repairs coming in, was forced to work on his own account. He had, no doubt, learned something of coach building during his apprenticeship and put this to good use at this time since an auction sale advertisement in 1865 ¹⁰ offered ‘A very superior Waggonette, (by Sweetland, of Bath,) with pole and bars complete; it also turns into a four-wheeled Dogcart, and equal to new’. Here we see his mechanical ingenuity showing in the ability to convert the seating configuration from two inward-facing benches (waggonette) to a back-to-back transverse arrangement (dogcart). Things were changing, however, and the late 1840s were auspicious times for a young man setting out in business as an organ builder. The movement of population from village to town, of which Sweetland himself was an example, had been hastened by the Industrial Revolution in the early years of the century. The requirement for buildings to house the growing population was not confined to domestic needs since philanthropists, often the industrialists who set up the factories, were also concerned with the spiritual welfare of the workers, and churches and chapels were erected to provide places of worship. Added to this was the Oxford Movement which, with its emphasis on surpliced choirs, hastened the demise of the west gallery band and its replacement by an organ often sited in a chamber off the chancel in the newly restored church. Bath escaped the worst of the industrial age and, to this day, has never been other than a stronghold of evangelical worship so far as the established church is concerned, but it had a fashionable society who patronized a collection of private chapels and these provided opportunities for organ building which Sweetland was able to exploit. Further afield, the expansion of the railway network opened up areas of Wales and the far south-west where he filled a need which, in the early years of his trading, could not be supplied locally.