Over the past few months, we have been acquiring some really magnificent grand pianos and after careful restoration of the cellar, we were ready to put them all in situ this weekend.

What we hadn’t entirely anticipated was that not a single one of our grand pianos would fit down the 18th century staircase to the vaults! However, our friends at Butler Smith quickly came up with a plan which involved a self-propelled spider crane that was strong enough to lift even our 550kg 7’6″ concert grand.

Even with our nifty crane, the largest of our pianos had to be lowered in keyboard first, which was not an operation for the faint-hearted! Nonetheless all seven pianos were successfully maneuvered in without so much as a scratch, and our instrumental consultant, Alastair Laurence is currently tuning and regulating in anticipation of our first course this weekend.