Peter Royds (FS 62-67) has sent his recollections of the school choir and makes an appeal:

 “I joined the school choir when I arrived at St Bees in late 1962. It was directed by Donald Leggat, the resident music teacher. He was an excellent, if uncompromising, choirmaster. The choir consisted of about forty boys, spanning all age and vocal ranges, and two masters, A.N.R. Dearle and M.H. Cotterell. We practised in Old College Hall, a large first floor room joined onto the Priory Church and sharing its ecclesiastical origins. We sat at choir stalls arranged in two semi circles round Don Leggat, at his piano, smoking when the pressure was on. Over in the school chapel, the choir pews were in an alcove next to the organ. Occasionally, we went to sing at local churches. I remember Boot church in particular. There was a special quality to the sung evensongs held periodically in the Priory, enhanced by the "Willis" organ.

I have a photograph of what is obviously a choir practice in Old College Hall. It was taken in early 1963, and has "T.V. Times" stamped on the back. I can name most of the faces but had to pass on three. There was a lot of activity around this time in preparation for the (sixth) St Bees Festival of Music. The President of the 1963 Festival was Sir John Barbirolli. It was supported by the Arts Council. There was a group of patrons comprising the great and the good, and an organising committee chaired by the Headmaster, J.C. Wykes.

The 1963 Festival took place at the end of the Easter term. When the rest of the school went home, the choir moved into the Foundation. The orchestra may have done so also. It consisted of over forty players gathered from near and far. Four soloists (voice) were also engaged. Donald Leggat was "Conductor, artistic director and Festival manager". There were five concerts at St Bees, two on Thursday 4th April and three on Saturday 6th. The finale of the concert on the Saturday was an abridged version of the Gondoliers. These all took place in the Memorial Hall. On these same two dates, there were evensongs in the Priory. In between, on Friday 5th, the choir performed with the orchestra and soloists at Carlisle Cathedral along with the Cathedral choir, where the first performance of Prof. Patrick Hadley's cantata "Lenten Meditations" was given. He was moved to tears by the performance. From St Bees, we went to the Whiteworth Hall at Manchester University for a final concert on April 8th. J.C. Wykes played in the percussion section of the orchestra and Eric Middleton (chemistry teacher) with the violins.
The apparent gift of total recall of the detail of these distant events is illusory. I still have the various concert programmes! One of them lists all the boys in the choir, which also greatly assisted in matching names to the said photo.

I thought the best place for this material was the school archives and Dr Reeve, the Archivist, now has custody of it. I also donated sundry school, house and team photos, with names where possible; and I've parted with my Upper VI Latin prose exercise book, complete with A.A. Cotes' fastidious comments and marks out of twenty. There were only three of us in that class.

My reason for writing this piece, however, is to find out if anyone still has a set of the recordings which were made of the 1963 Festival concerts by Audivision Developments (Oxford) Ltd/Alpha Records. There are none at the school. If they are not extinct, it would be timely, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Festival, to transfer a set onto cd for anyone wanting a copy, and for the archives. Can anyone help? (peterroyds622@hotmail.com).

Donald Leggat's time at St Bees ended after G.W. Lees succeeded J.C. Wykes as Headmaster. It was said that he was not such an avid supporter of the choirmaster's musical ambitions for the school as his predecessor had been. I saw Don Leggat's name several years later on a poster for a concert at the Edinburgh Festival by a school/group from N. Ireland. Don, a bachelor, lived in rooms in the house at the far end of Lonsdale Terrace. I recall his Rover 105 (mentioned by John West in a previous issue) because I was driven in it. Don used to take two members of the choir out for high tea at the weekends.

One of the concert programmes mentions that the choir had been booked to appear on Border T.V. on Sunday 10th March 1963. I don't remember that at all, but I'm sure someone will. Clearly a possible link there with the T.V. Times stamp on the back of the photo.

The civilised ethos of the choir was not, sadly, characteristic of the mainstream life of the school at that time, as I recall it. It was very difficult to take seriously, in the mid 1960s, the culture of curious and outmoded privileges, power structures (which included fagging) and punishments (runs and beatings), which had more in common with the nineteenth century system of transportation to New South Wales. But others may remember this era fondly.”

 

Home

The St Beghian Society,    St Bees School,    St Bees,    Cumbria,    CA27 0DS.
         Tel: (01946) 828093      Email: osb@st-bees-school.co.uk      
Web: www.st-beghian-society.co.uk