The organ William Hill built for St. Elisabeth’s was opened on 24th April 1885 By Dr. Bridge of Westminster Abbey.

From the start, the console was detached and placed, as at present, on the south side of the Choir. The action was pneumatic, and the tubes controlling the action passed under the chancel floor through a tunnel which Waterhouse specially designed for this purpose. These connecting tubes were over sixty feet in length and special pneumatic relays had to be constructed under the chancel in order to achieve some semblance of prompt response at the keys. The action, however, was always slow by modern standards.

By the late 1950’s water had begun to penetrate the tunnel, and the action was in poor repair. The parish was faced with an enormous expense, and at one point actually considered scrapping the organ and replacing it with a second-hand instrument from a Cinema in Liverpool.
Eventually, the parish asked the late Geoffrey Barber, then organist at the near-by Church of St. Paul, Heaton Moor, to act as consultant. In spite of its almost unplayable condition, it began to be recognised that the organ was an instrument of both historic and musical value.