2. Widford Lodge Preparatory School for Boys 1987-1989
This little anthem by Thomas Attwood the English pupil of Mozart and founding principle of the Royal Academy of Music in London was a favourite with this choir Come Holy Ghost our Souls Inspire
At Widford Lodge Prep School for Boys I joined my first regular choir which was the Boys Choir of Widford Lodge I moved to this school after my parents divorced. It was then a single sex traditional private primary school with a strict academic agenda. It was an incredibly interesting curriculum in those days because it was not centralised so the teachers could do as they wished and we did creative writing in English all the time with our choirmaster James Smith, a bit of science and Art, they started us with French and a bit of O level Geography and History when we were just 9! It was run like a 1950s Oxford College. We all had lunch and assembly together in the hall with our Headmaster Henry Witham. We had to stand up when we went in and the principle sat on the centre table with the big chairs with his prefects, and we said grace together for our meal and then sat down dished it out from one end and ate.
‘For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful. Amen.’
If you put your elbows in the table rather than your forearms Mr Smith sent you out of lunch with nothing you had to be careful with that it was a rather spiteful running joke with him.
Mr James Smith and his wife Katie Fenn were Graduates of Trinity Laban College of music in London. I’m in the middle on the far left. James left us in 1989 about a term before I did to take up being head of music at Roald Dahl’s former public school Repton College in the North of England.
We did services at Great Baddow Church and Waltham Abbey, Carols and Founders day in Chelmsford Cathedral, Christian assemblies every day, and Chelmsford Cathedral Festival Fringe 1987 & 88. We also sang in the first round of Sainsbury’s Choir of the Year Competition at St Kats College Cambridge and were invited to sing at the Pearse School in a Choral seminar with the top lines from all the Cambridge College Choirs in a production of Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat as it was known then (now. just Joseph.)
This is me adorned with ruffle, cassock surplus, and dragon’s teeth at Chelmsford Cathedral Festival Fringe 1988. I can still remember my mum starching my ruffle on my grandmas coal fired AGA range form the 1930s.
He didn’t let me in the choir in the first term which painfully bitter and it also meant that when the full members went on tour to Amsterdam Cathedral I as a probationer wasn’t allowed to go with them. I wailed to mum for 2 whole weeks because of that, but he kept my head down and was an excellent choirmaster musically even if he never let you pick your music up in the sermon under fear of death, same for passing the Refreshers round in prayers.
My audition for the Chapel Royal in St James’s Palace to be a Chorister for Queen Elizabeth II
In 1989 I was given an audition for the Chapel Royal in St James’s Palace in London as part of my entrance exam for Westminster Private School. I didn’t get it but he liked my voice, strangely enough I could hear seconds better than 3rds in those days. I sang my solo quite well, I think it was Oh, for the Wings of a Dove, from Hear My Prayer by Mendelssohn. I did get to see the Chapel where Purcell worked at Master of the Kings Music though, and the Queen’s Choristers rehearse for Remembrance Day on Whitehall, which was amazing! You win some, you lose some!
