Noordbroek, Hervormde Kerk

Arp Schnitger 1695/96, Albert Hinsz 1752 and 1768, Heinrich Freytag 1809

State of preservation: The organ in  Noordbroek is a rare example of instrument gradually grown over the centuries within a single workshop tradition, hardly changed during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Arp Schnitger built a small organ of about 20 stops (II+P) in 1695–1696 (last payments in 1698) possibly as so often using some older pipes. The pedal stops were placed behind the case.

After Arp Schnitger's death his sons moved the workshop from Hamburg to Groningen in 1719. After Frans Caspar Schnitger's death in 1729, his journeyman Albert Anthoni Hinsz (1704–1785) of Hamburg married the widow and took over the workshop. He repaired the Noordbroek organ in 1752 and 1768 widening the compass and renewing the wind chests, including some new stops to a sum of 24 in total.
Heinrich Hermann Freytag (1759–1811) did the last enlargement in 1809. He had governed the workshop in company with Arp's grandson Frans Caspar jun. (1724–1799) and led it into the 19th century. Freytag moved the pedal to towers at the sides joined wit intermediate pipe fields, and renewed the front pipes  with unusually old-fashioned "donkey-back" labia.
A next bigger repair in 1855 by Petrus van Oeckelen (1792–1878) obviously created only minor changes concerning three stops of the RP, which were restored in mid 20th century by  Simon Graafhuis and Cornelius H. Edskes.