Bedford Gallery Quire Recent Events

Recent Events
28th June 2008 Annual Church Tour	The tour began at St Mary’s Church, Everton followed by St John the Evangelist, Moggerhanger. After a picnic lunch with home-made ginger beer and sarsaparilla we moved on to The Abbey Church of St Leonard, Old Warden. Our final visit was to All Saints Church, Sutton where we sang Isaac Smith’s ‘Abridge’ to the accompaniment of their splendid barrel organ. The day drew to a close with a delicious tea including ‘Warden Pie’, from an ancient Warden pear recipe.
26th April 2008 St Peter’s and St Paul’s Church, Olney Buckinghamshire	This concert concluded a special day of celebration to mark the re-launch of the Cowper & Newton Museum following an intensive programme of work over the winter.
20th April 2008 Thurleigh & Keysoe Row East Baptist Churches	A celebration of 200 years of these two Bedfordshire ‘causes’, bringing back the music which the ordinary local people once sang in their chapels.
5th April 2008 Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Historic Churches Trust	The quire's performance concluded an annual study day at Bedford School. The programme represented music throughout the West Gallery period linked with historical fact for this expert audience.
22nd December 2007 Knuston Hall (Northants County Council) Irchester Northamptonshire	A concert portraying A Georgian Christmas was the after dinner entertainment for a themed event. The singing was linked by amusing historical anecdotes one of which, involving mistletoe, was unrehearsed and left one of our female singers very surprised!
10th December 2007 Bedford Central Library Harpur Street Bedford	A concert based on the evolution of West Gallery music as part of 'Good Afternoon', a series of daytime lectures at Bedford Central Library.
5th December 2007 St Andrew & St George’s Church, Stevenage	A return visit to Stevenage to provide a taste of nineteenth century Christmas pieces.
6th October 2007 Holy Trinity Church Great Paxton Cambridgeshire	A harvest concert to raise money for 21st century plumbing for this ancient Saxon Minster church.
28th September 2007 Hitchin Ceilidh Hitchin Town Hall, Herts	A selection of Bedfordshire West Gallery music as the entertainment between the two halves of the dancing.
24th June 2007 Annual Church Tour	This was a tour of four of Bedfordshire’s most interesting old churches and chapels, some with galleries, with a picnic lunch at Stevington Windmill, and ending with tea and scones at Roxton Congregational Church.
21st June 2007 Bunyan Meeting Free Church and Museum Mill Street, Bedford	A concert for the Friends of the museum. It gave us great delight to sing in the place where the manuscripts which provide much of our repertoire were found and to be able to benefit the organisation which made them available to us.
3rd May 2007 St Peter’s Church Harrold, Bedfordshire	This concert, part of the Ouse Valley Arts Festival, was enlivened by an account of the heinous crimes of a late 18th / early 19th century vicar of Harrold which we dug out of the archives.
7th January 2007 St Mary’s Church Goldington,Bedford	A Christmas choral evensong including a local, metrical version of the Nunc Dimittis and the Magnificat sung to a tune found in a 19th century collection by an ancestor of one of our fiddlers.
6th January 2007 St Denis' Church Colmworth Bedfordshire	A carol concert sung from a gallery overlooking the grave of Timothy Matthews, a curate of Colmworth. We were lent, and played, the bugle with which he went about Bedfordshire announcing his presence and intention of preaching.