The Mighty Wurlitzer will be piping up again in a matter of months after staff at Victoria Hall in Saltaire took delivery of the organ.

Weighing seven tons, the £800,000 Wurlitzer has now gone on display in the museum of the historic hall.

It will become a major crowd-puller for the World Heritage Site once a £117,000 renovation project is completed by the end of the year.

First used in the 1930s to accompany ‘talkie’ films, it has been in the care of the Cinema Organ Society since the 1960s after it was removed from an old picture house. Members of the society were at Victoria Hall when the organ’s console was delivered on Saturday.

The society’s northern chairman Godfrey Nield said: “This is the exciting part that everybody sees above the stage. We have put it on display in Victoria Hall to generate a bit of interest. It will be there until November, when it will go on the stage at the hall.”

Then, the organ will be installed on a hydraulic platform in the main hall.

The project to bring the organ was started in April by the Salt Foundation – Saltaire’s charity partnership – Shipley College and the Cinema Organ Society.

Private donations have so far brought in £70,000 towards the cost of renovating the hall, said Mr Nield.

The society is applying for grants from the Arts Council and Business for the Arts to raise more money.

Saltaire architects Rance Booth and Smith will carry out the renovation, which will include finding a way of fitting the organ pipework and the lifting mechanism into the hall.

Mr Nield said: “Work starts in a fortnight to convert two rooms and the stage to make an opening for the lift platform. That will take about eight weeks, then it will take 12 weeks to install the organ itself. The intention is that it will be playing in one form or another by the end of the year.”

Built by the American Wurlitzer company and installed in the Gaumont cinema in Oldham in 1937, the white and gold organ is made of 700 pipes.

The 70-year-old Saltaire Organ is one of the few working Wurlitzers in the country, with the most famous one in Blackpool’s Tower Ballroom.