Every year, on the first Sunday in July, Abbeylands Methodist Church holds a special service to celebrate its Sunday School anniversary.

On Sunday, July 6, 1941, an 11-year-old Olive Clelland stepped up to the stool of the church’s organ in the backdrop of the glen near the chapel and played for the attending congregation with ’wonderful efficiency’ (according to an edition of The Manx Methodist written at the time).

Although there is not currently a functioning Sunday school at the church, there will still be an anniversary service as usual on Sunday, July 4 at 3pm - and Olive, now 91, will take her place on the same organ stool to play a selection of hymns chosen by herself for the occasion.

In the 80 years since her first service as the Abbeylands organist, Olive married Robert Dobson in 1954, and had two children, Johnny and Marion, who each have children of their own.

The Manx Independent spoke to Olive about the upcoming milestone and her lifetime full of music and family.

Mrs Dobson recalled the beginnings of her tenure, explaining that she was initially asked to play at the children’s practices for the anniversary service in 1941.

She said: ’There were about 30 children in the Sunday school at that time and the Minister’s wife did the training for the anniversary. She asked me if I would play for the practices.

’I must have been satisfactory, because [my father received] a letter from the secretary of the chapel asking if he would give me permission to be an official organist at the chapel.’

After Mrs Dobson accepted the position, the first thing that required attention was the chapel’s organ stool.

’When I started to play at 11, I sat on the seat, but my legs wouldn’t touch the pedals,’ she recalled.

’My eldest brother [Jack] was a joiner, so he had to chop the bottom off the wood, around about six inches from the bottom of the thing.’

She had started to play the piano aged eight - and quickly learned she had an innate ability to play without sheet music to guide her.

She said: ’If I knew the tune I could play it. It’s an extra gift. I would call it a God-given gift.

’People say to me "well how do you know what notes to play with the left hand?" I say I never think about it. And I don’t. Honestly I don’t think, it just happens.

’I suppose I work on scales and arpeggios and different things, but basically I don’t think about my left hand [unless I’m reading music].’

She described Abbeylands as having a small yet devoted congregation.

The church opened its doors in 1813, and was originally built to serve residents of the hamlet and workers on the local farm.

Although its demography has shifted over time, it still holds special services and concerts throughout the year including harvest and carol services.

Mrs Dobson recalled the concerts of her youth, which were held in the reading room of the church before being moved into the main chapel.

She said: ’We used to cart the piano I played at home from the farm on a trailer. It was a wonderful old piano. It was bought in a sale room for me to learn on, and it kept going, it never lost its pitch.

’Mostly they say if you move a piano, it has to be tuned after, but it didn’t lose its pitch.

’It must have been quite a spectacle really, I never thought about it, how it all looked.’

A middle child, Olive was raised within the close-knit farming community with her elder brother Jack and younger brother Billie, on her father’s farm, about a mile up the road from the church.

She was one of many children that went to Sunday school at Abbeylands who were children of farmers or farm workers.

She said: ’You could have a dozen children [at the Sunday school] before Hollantide. Then when Hollantide came you could lose half of them because they all belonged to one family and they were gone.’

Hollantide - a remnant of the old Celtic New Year - refers to the end of the harvest season and the start of winter - more commonly celebrated now as Hop-tu-Naa, which is thought to be the oldest unbroken tradition in the Isle of Man.

When Mrs Dobson first began playing the organ for the church, she would be given the hymns which were to be played in upcoming services a couple of weeks early - to give her the chance to practise them with her music teacher.

She said: ’I would bring them to my music teacher, and she’d go through them with me, and I knew I was right because she’d been there and done that, so if anybody complainedâ?¦’

When asked if anyone had ever actually complained about her playing, she said: ’There was a bit of a battle going on between me at the organ, a bit of a kid, and a man in his 70s singing in the back.

’He sang it his way and I played it my way. So I did it my way as the song goes. It was a bit of a conflict sometimes.’

When asked who won these battles, she said: ’Oh I won... because I knew I was right.’

While 80 years playing at one church is a milestone in and of itself, Mrs Dobson also played for a considerable number of years at Onchan Methodist Church.

She was asked to play there on a temporary basis until they found someone else - something which ultimately became a decades long commitment.

She said: ’Their head steward came [to see me where] I lived in Onchan at that time. He came round and asked would I be kind enough to "temporarily" play the organ at Onchan chapel until they got a different one... I was there 50 years.’

While she was a paid organist at Onchan, Mrs Dobson has never taken any payment for playing at Abbeylands, and views it as simply a service she does for the community she is so used to.

’I’m not a performer, I’m an accompanist. And there’s a big difference,’ she explained.

’You can tell a person who’s never been trained to accompany, because they go off on their own tangent and they don’t listen to what’s happening around them.

’An accompanist it taught to listen and follow. It just comes natural.’

Alongside the music career which has so defined her life for the last 80 years, Mrs Dobson credited her family with being a constant support, something which she thinks has allowed her to be so dedicated to the church.

She said: ’[My husband] Bobby encouraged me to do it, get it done, you know. He didn’t object.

’Many a man would’ve said "what are you scratching out there all day and every day?"

’And the children never questioned it, they just tagged along.’

When asked the secret to her 80 years at the helm of the music at Abbeylands, Olive put it simply: ’If you’ve been blessed with good health it can happen.’