Lincoln Choristers

Compiled by Peter Harrod

From the Garton Archive: Item of Interest No 46

Carol singing on Christmas Eve in the early 1950s. The Mayor is about to turn on the illuminations

Those of you who read my articles on a regular basis may recall the June 2015 Picture of the Month, which featured a group of Lincoln chorister in 1939. That article focused in particular on the detail of the photograph itself, but this one takes the story further, and delves into the history of Lincoln School alumni who formed part of the Cathedral over the centuries.

The following quotation from the Lincoln Cathedral website sets the scene:

Apart from the Commonwealth period (1649-1660) when was more or less outlawed in English churches, there has been a choir at Lincoln Cathedral since the time of its foundation more than nine centuries ago. In the past, like many other traditional choral foundations, Lincoln’s choir consisted of boy trebles singing the top line of music, followed, in descending order, by men singing alto, tenor and bass.

Looking back at the history of Lincoln School, it is clear that members of the Lincoln Cathedral Choir were drawn largely from its pupils.

An unpublished paper by Dr Roger Bowers of the of Birmingham Department of Music described in some detail the organists and Masters of the Choristers at Lincoln from 1300 to 1540.

At first the choristers were sent downhill to Lincoln , which was then sited somewhere in St Rumbold’s parish, a little to the north of the present YMCA, to be taught by the city schoolmaster. However, Dr Bowers wrote that those arrangements were modified towards the end of the 14th century, when it was decided to appoint a private tutor to avoid sending the boys downhill to the grammar school.

The boys’ musical , originally in the hands of a vicar-choral, became increasingly more sophisticated during the latter part of the fifteenth century, when the boys were expected to be sing polyphonic music in addition to plainsong and descant, and needed to be able to understand the complexities of mensural notation. Thus a Magister Cantus, or fully qualified specialist musician, who was effectively the forerunner of the present-day organist and choirmaster was appointed, and the most famous of those at Lincoln cathedral’s Song School was the celebrated composer, , who was in post from 1563 to1572 (see Item of Interest 37 from the Garton Archive publications on the LCHS website).

After the , the Song School and the Grammar School once more played separate roles in the education of the choristers, and Maddison (1878) reported that bitter complaints were sometimes made by the Music Master that the boys were kept so long at the Grammar School that they had no time to practise singing.

Once again I turn to the writings of Professor Charles Garton, that self-styled ‘monomaniac’, who spent so much of his leisure time researching and writing up the history of Lincoln Grammar School. In the darkest recesses of the Garton Archive filing system I found his unpublished paper titled, The Schooling (other than musical) of the Choirboys of Lincoln Cathedral. The following is a brief summary of the article, which traces what he describes as the ‘continuous intertwinement’ of the history of the Lincoln Cathedral choirboys and the history of Lincoln School.

Before 1264 the choristers lived on the charity of the canons, but nothing specific is known about the arrangements for their schooling. One might speculate that they may have attended Lincoln School (abbreviated in to ‘Scol.Linc’), and known to have been a grammar school since about 1220.

In 1264 Bishop Gravesend enacted that the choristers should live communally under one master. The earliest accounts of his ordinance do not mention schooling, but there is evidence from later documents that Gravesend had been credited with decreeing that the boys’ master should ‘instruct and teach them grammar and litterarum scientia’.

From about 1330 to 1407 the Burghersh Chanters, founded in 1348, were to attend the Lincoln Grammar School, then sited downhill in the parish of St Rumbold. According to Charles Garton there is no evidence that the chanters sang in the cathedral choir before the Reformation. However, there is evidence that the choirboys did. An unpublished paper by Dr Roger Bowers of the University of Birmingham Department of Music described in some detail the organists and Masters of the Choristers at Lincoln Minster from 1300 to 1540. Boys were admitted to the choir at the age of nine, and numbered about twelve. They were already expected to be conversant with the commonest plainsong melodies, and able to read with a modicum of fluency.

Professor Garton’s own researches revealed that in 1351 Bishop Gynwell laid it down that the should have the right to appoint one suitable ‘pedagogus’ for the instruction of the boys in song and grammar, and the ruling was confirmed by Bishop Buckingham in 1380. From the available evidence, Professor Garton has inferred that the grammar taught by the pedagogus in the cathedral Close was preparatory or supplementary to that taught downhill at the Grammar School.

In the year 1407, following an objection by Lincoln Grammar School to the Close schoolhouse taking boys who should have formed part of its own catchment, it was finally agreed, after some negotiation, that the choristers might be freely taught by the school in the Close, but that once a term they were required to go down to Lincoln Grammar School and be under the instruction and discipline of the Headmaster. This agreement symbolically ensured that the Cathedral boys should continue to be members of the Grammar School, was never rescinded, and remained in force at least nominally until the Reformation. The masters of the Close school were usually vicars-choral and, unlike those below hill, were not known to have been university graduates.

The years between 1539 and 1584 saw a period of vacillation during which political and economic factors resulted in the choristers being transferred between the Close to the school in the parish of St Rumbold. Stability was restored in 1584 when Lincoln Grammar School moved to its Greyfriars premises, where it became the official place of schooling for the cathedral choirboys for some 300 years.

The second half of the nineteenth century saw changes in which the cathedral choristers were removed from Lincoln Grammar School and taught under the aegis of the Mantle family; a father and two sons, in a building in Northgate, sometimes referred to as the Choir School, or the Cathedral School. Then, in 1913, Precentor Wakeford moved the School into the Burghersh Chantry in James Street. The Choir School in Northgate closed in 1920 when, following the return of Lincoln Grammar School to its new Wragby Road premises after the Great War, the choirboys returned in full attendance to Lincoln Grammar School, which had by then changed its name to Lincoln School. Reg Woodward, a pupil at Lincoln School from 1928-38, described a daily practice, followed by Matins, which lasted until 11 am. Evensong was also sung every day.

Since 1961 the choirboys have attended the Cathedral School in Eastgate, which has since greatly expanded and has changed its name to the Minster School. I shall now take up the story through the experiences of three Lincoln cathedral choristers who attended Lincoln School spanning the years 1919 to 1946; Basil Boothroyd, Reg Woodward and Graham Garton.

Lincoln Cathedral Choir in 1930

Basil Boothroyd was educated at Lincoln Cathedral Choir School and was a pupil at Lincoln School from 1919 to 1926. In his autobiography A Shoulder to Laugh on, he claims that in 1919, when he was 9 years old, he set fire to the Burghersh Chantry, ‘Lincoln’s low old sprawling choir school’. Too young for an incendiary, he believed! In that old building, tucked down an obscure lane near the Cathedral precincts, the choirboys slept several to a room perhaps dreaming about tomorrow’s Matins or Evensong, and wondering if they could reach the high B-flat of Stanford’s Magnificat, and how much would old Bennett grunt from the organ loft as he strove to hold back the choir from hurrying the psalms.

Basil wrote that education at the Song School was a hit-and-miss affair. The mornings and afternoons were spent mainly in the Song School, and somewhere in between they had to wedge in a little Latin. Choirboys rapidly learned to sing and study simultaneously, and Basil recalled that well-placed worshippers could be surprised to see that the boys had been fluting, ‘O Lord make haste to help us’ from First Steps in Latin; its title invariably amended by accepted practice to First Steps in Eating!

After the Choir School had, in Basil’s words ‘foundered and sunk’, later to be reconstituted and to flourish, the boys found themselves lodged with vergers and their wives, or other ‘good cathedral souls’. They also found themselves learning fresh settings, having been ‘disruptingly whisked into Lincoln School as day boys’. At Lincoln School, Basil described the choirboys as ‘creatures apart’, dressed as they were in their Eton suits and collars, mortar boards, and the Choir’s retained uniform. They were regarded by the other boys with a mixture of envy and scorn! They rose and left classrooms at will, with staff scarcely nodding from their elevated dais as they trotted smugly off to sing. Time was of the essence. The Chantry had been a mere two minutes scuttle from the Cathedral; Lincoln School was a mile away down Wragby Road. Long division and Pitt the Younger were joyfully abandoned with ample time in hand! According to Basil, the School was nothing; the Cathedral everything.

Then Basil’s voice broke, from top As to bottom B-flats with intervening yodelling, and he became a boarder at Lincoln School with full attendance. He was not considered to be the ‘university-going class’, and failed to pass any examinations, getting 14 out of 400 in his last maths paper! It is impossible to judge the effect of the disruption of being a chorister on Basil’s school career, but it must surely have had an impact. All’s well that ends well, however, and following a brief episode in banking, he managed to pursue a highly successful career as an assistant editor of Punch, and a writer for films, television and radio, earning the best Comedy Award in 1976. He also wrote several books, most of which form part of Professor Charles Garton’s ex-libris collection in the Garton Archive at Lincoln Christ’s Hospital School.

Reg Woodward was a pupil at Lincoln School from 1928 to 1938. It is hardly surprising that he became a chorister as he came from a musical family, and his father was a chorister for many years at Lincoln Cathedral. In his charming autobiography, Boy on a Hill, Reg described how he was keen to learn the piano, and at the age of nine had lessons from a Mr Harry Trevitt, organist at St Peter-in- Eastgate church, followed later by further tuition from Miss Stockwell. In September 1928, his father announced that Dr Bennett, Lincoln Cathedral organist and choirmaster from 1895 to 1930, had agreed to test Reg’s voice with a view to enrolling him in the choir. Reg expressed surprise that he was accepted, and modestly attributed it to the fact that his father had been a member of the Choir since 1898, and was held in the highest esteem as a musician by Dr Bennett! From that moment events moved with startling rapidity. Clothes were purchased for choir and school, and two days later Reg entered two strange new worlds; the choir and Lincoln School.

Reg in Lincoln School cap and tie …and as a new Cathedral Choirboy Reg described the Cathedral as a world of its own; a world of rules and protocols presided over by a hierarchy of clergy, some of whom bore a striking resemblance to the fierce Old Testament prophets featured in the windows! For a choirboy, however, the entire universe revolved around the organist and choirmaster, Dr Bennett, who apparently enjoyed something of a turbulent relationship with many of the Cathedral dignitaries!

In those days the boys wore Eton suits and collars, topped by mortar boards, and striped trousers. Dr Bennett had a violent temper, and in the Song School at Lincoln Cathedral he would haul out a boy by the collar, and administer a beating with a hard and heavy hand over the benches. Apparently, however, this somewhat sadistic steak, not unknown to schoolmasters of the time, was tempered by acts of genuine kindness. Dr Bennett’s assistant was Mr Francis, described by Reg as a rather colourless character. The boys preferred the youthful Clifford Hewis, a pupil of Dr Bennett who went on to serve the Cathedral as assistant organist and choirmaster for over half a century and who, incidentally, struggled to teach me to play the piano during my years at Lincoln School.

According to Reg, the life of the choirboys was a hard and demanding one. They practised every morning from 8.45 to 9.45 am, followed on Tuesdays and Fridays by Matins from 9.45 to 10.30. In the afternoons they rehearsed from 3.45 to 4.30 pm, after which Evensong was sung until 5.15 pm. Wednesday was a ‘free’ day unless it was a ’s Day. On Sundays they practised at 10.00 am, sang matins at 10.30, left before the sermon for a snack in the Song School situated up a winding turret staircase above the clergy vestry, sang Choral Eucharist at 11.45 am and completed their duties with Evensong at 3.15 pm.

The implications for the choirboys’ education do not need to be spelled out. A total of seven school lessons a week were missed, and the boys were expected to make up for that loss in their own time, and to fit in their homework around their other obligations to the choir. Moreover, they were expected to work at the Cathedral for most of the Christmas and Easter holidays, and their summer holidays were reduced to four weeks. In addition, the Cathedral was often alarmingly cold during the winter, and the music was frequently very difficult, more especially from the Boyce books, which were enormous, heavy volumes with only the treble part in them. This meant that sometimes the boys had to count for fifty bars, with the inevitability of a fearful row if anyone made a false entry.

Needless to say there were compensations, which Reg lists in his book. He also wrote that the disciplines involved in being a choirboy stood them in good stead, as they learned as a child to do a man’s work in a man’s world. The work did not appear to affect their sporting aspirations either as Reg and many of his contemporaries played cricket and football for the Lincoln School first eleven. He mentions Tommy Kirby, Neville Richardson, Tim MacDonald, Geoff Spalding, Dick Rollett, Geoff Broxholme and others as keen sportsmen. By that time the post of organist and choirmaster had been taken over by the highly respected Dr Gordon Slater, somewhat irreverently known by the soubriquet ‘Gassy’, largely but not exclusively because of his initials G A S! During his regime, new modern music was introduced and not immediately appreciated by all the boys. However, choirboys were professionals, and had to sing works of great difficulty and complexity irrespective of their own particular musical taste.

At this point I am unable to resist quoting the great conductor Sir Thomas Beecham who, when asked if he had ever played any Stockhausen, is reputed to have replied, “No, but I trod in some the other day”!

At that time the choirboys’ uniform had changed to black cassocks, with ruffs, and the four head boys wore fine black capes with a light grey border and modestly decorated crosspiece. Reg’s lovingly crafted description of life as a Lincoln Cathedral choirboy offers one of the best insights we have into its rigorous demands.

Dr Gordon Slater rehearses the choir in the early 1950s ( Echo photograph)

Graham Garton, younger brother of Professor Charles Garton, was a pupil at Lincoln School from 1937 to 1946. He entered Lincoln Cathedral Choir as a probationer in September 1937, and became a Burghersh Chanter a few months later. In 1942 he became a full chorister, working his way up to becoming its leader, and left in April 1945, recalling that the choir sang ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’ as the Evensong anthem. Graham still has in his possession a well-worn and treasured English Hymnal given to him by the Precentor, Arthur , thanking him for his contribution to the work of the choir inscribed in his excellent handwriting. Graham also has stories to tell about Dr Slater, and even used his initials G A S as a motif in his first significant orchestral work, The Lincoln Imp, when he was a G J Bennett Scholar at the Royal of Music. Graham’s own illustrious career as a musician is recorded in Occasional Paper 47, and his impressive oeuvre of compositions is given pride of place on the shelves in the Garton Archive at LCHS.

Graham told me that he spent many long hours in the Choristers’ Vestry. It housed the light blue cassocks, white surplices and starched ruffs hung on pegs on a pair of free- standing substantial wooden roofed clothes racks. Discipline was maintained by the tenor Lay Clerk, Frederick Booth, known to all as Freddy. Here, Graham was ashamed to confess to a disgraceful piece of behaviour. In front of him was a blue-cassocked rear in bending- down position. It was an opportunity too good to miss and, in meaningful humour, he took a flying kick at it. Up jumped Freddy, as red-faced in anger as Graham was on realising who it was. He apologetically and truthfully blurted out, “I'm sorry, sir; I thought it was Kelsey”.

Graham described Freddy as a fine tenor and a versatile musician who played bassoon in the orchestra which accompanied the Lincoln Choral Society, which sang behind a front row of choristers in oratorio performances. He could thus watch and listen to Freddy at close range. He particularly recalled his bass line from the aria in Bach's St. Matthew Passion, “I would beside my Lord”. The choir sang that oratorio in the every year, conducted by Gordon Slater in cassock and voluminous surplice waving his arms about and scarcely looking at the singers!

Graham recalled that the Choristers’ Vestry led through to the bottom of large spiral stone steps by which one reached the Song School. A short way up was a leading to a railed outside area. Steps descended to ground level where a small recess contained a urinal. Sometimes, during a long choir practice, choristers with full bladders needed to request, “Please, sir, may I go down the steps?” The spiral steps continued a little further until a yale-locked outward-opening door blocked the way, They discovered that by pulling it with the thick tooth of a hair comb it could be unlocked. It led to the which had a safety rail, and thence to the clerestory from which there was no protection from the long drop below. It was regarded as a daring feat to crawl a few feet forwards and return backwards.

On the route to the Cloisters, just before the first big aisle door on the right hand side, was the choir music library. Graham spent many hours there on Saturday afternoons gathering the sets of music for the following week and carrying them up to the Song School. He also often had to put the music out in the choir stalls for services.

When Graham was a Cope Boy on the west end of Cantoris, there were three Lay Clerks behind him: Messrs Endersby (bass), Booth (tenor) and Ramsay (alto). He never understood why there were always more than three Lay Clerks on Decanai. Endersby was prone to pushing sweets through to me occasionally, whispering, “Would you like a Zube?” or “Would you like a Jelly Baby?” From the Song School east window one could see Dr Slater walking to the South Door and thence to Choir Practice. It was always a sine qua non that practice began on time even if neither Dr Slater nor his Assistant were there. He remembered Tommy Laidler sitting on the piano stool at the Broadwood piano, starting practice. Later it was Dennis Townhill, then Graham himself, who wrote that Dr Slater would touch your shoulder and you retired to your place pronto.

It is clear from the accounts of the duties and exploits of the choristers during that period that it was a challenging experience, but one suffused with vivid memories. It is also clear that they benefited from a basic musical education from which many would pursue careers as musicians. Pupils who were influenced by Dr Slater, and indeed Clifford Hewis, included acclaimed musicians Dennis Townhill OBE, Steve Race OBE, Sir Neville Marriner CBE, and of course Graham Garton. All four are featured in articles from the Garton Archive in the Lincoln Christ’s Hospital (LCHS) website under LCHS Our School/History of LCHS/School Archive.

There were, however, implications for the choristers’ general education. During the 1950s, when I was a pupil at Lincoln School, choirboys would be late arriving for school on at least two mornings per week because of their commitments to the Cathedral choir, and this practice went back through the centuries. This must surely have had some adverse effect on their studies.

Choirboys in the Lincoln Cathedral Song School during the late 1930s Dennis Townhill is fourth from the left on the top row There are two boys below the senior chorister wearing glasses. Graham Garton is the one on the left Dr Gordon Slater is on the left in the forefront and Cliff Hewis is on his right

I have recently had the pleasure of listening to Evensong in the nave of Lincoln Cathedral. The crowning beauty of the service for me was the sublime singing of the choir. As I watched them troop into the after the service I was somewhat surprised to see that the choirboys were girls! Even though I knew full well that girls have alternated with boys for some time now, I had a mental set for boys, perhaps because of my preoccupation with this article. However, it does go to show that cathedral choirs, in company with most other aspects of our society and culture, do change with the times. Note

* Although the term ‘chorister’ is commonly used in and churches in general, in Lincoln Cathedral it is reserved for the four senior boys and girls, distinguished by their dark copes, or cloaks. The remainder are known as Burghersh Chanters for reasons dating back to the 16th century, and to the time when William Byrd was organist and choirmaster at Lincoln Cathedral. Historically there was no difference in rank or seniority between the two; the distinction simply referred to the source of their endowment. More recently, however, a custom of promoting chanters to choristers has been introduced (Turbet, 1993).

Glossary

Vicars-choral Members of clergy or lay vicars in a cathedral who form the adult members of the choir

Polyphonic Vocal music having two or more parts

Mensural notation Notation system used in European medieval choral music

Burghersh chanters Choirboys who have completed their initial training (named after the 14th century , Henry Burghersh)

Triforium Shallow arched gallery above the nave of a church

Clerestory The upper part of the nave, choir and transept of a cathedral

Decanai Pertaining to a , or a Dean’s seat

References

Basil Boothroyd (1987) A Shoulder to Laugh on St Edmundsbury Press Ltd

Roger Bowers, Organists and Masters of the Choristers at Lincoln Minster from 1300 to 1540. Unpublished Paper University of Birminghamha

Professor Charles Garton The Schooling (other than Musical) of the Choirboys of Lincoln Cathedral Unpublished Manuscript

Maddison, A R (1878) Vicars Choral of Lincoln Cathedral

Richard Turbet (1993) William Byrd1543 - 1623 The Honeywood Press Lincoln Cathedral Publications

Reg Woodward (1984) Boy on a Hill G W Bolton Ltd Gainsborough

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to Mr Laurence Oliver for supplying some of the photographs. In the picture below, taken in about 1954, he is the fifth choirboy from the left on the centre row.

The photograph of the choir in 1930, and those of Reg Woodward are taken from Reg’s book Boy on a Hill.

About the Author

Peter Harrod is a retired teacher and lecturer who is currently archivist for the pre- 1974 archives at Lincoln Christ’s Hospital School. He took piano lessons with the long-suffering Messrs Jack Ramsay and Clifford Hewis, both of whom feature in the article. He was later told by his music tutor that he had a voice like a donkey burping in a biscuit tin!