Not apocryphal - you're thinking of
Reading Town Hall. One of Father Willis's finest and least touched instruments (though smaller than some), in a lovely acoustic. The restoration (by Harrison's in 1999) of the ratchet swell lever and the original pitch were the
only changes required to make it as original apart from the blowing engine. Yes, it's no longer at standard concert pitch - but even that is not universally respected, as some well-known orchestras push it distinctly up (I believe some concert halls keep two pianos at slightly different pitches to cope with this). There are regular recitals since the restoration.
Only shortly earlier, real vandalism was fortunately prevented; the council had planned to divide the hall horizontally at the balcony level, leaving the stage and organ in a pit at one end of an architecturally and acoustically ruined space that would truly have been good for nothing. Fortunately a vigorous campaign was able, eventually, to get these plans thrown out.
Reading was my home town, and as a student I once hired the Town Hall for an hour to play the organ with a friend (now well-known in the organ world). It cost me 2/6d (12½p in modern parlance).
Paul