Bloxham’s Chapel Choir recently enjoyed an international tour to Belgium, including a performance at the iconic Menin Gate
Over the Easter holidays, 37 members of the Bloxham School Chapel Choir took part in our First World War Remembrance Tour of Belgium. They stayed in Antwerp and sang in the spectacular venues of Bruges and Ghent Cathedrals to appreciative audiences.
The music was chosen for its suitability for Holy Week and the centrepiece, appropriate for the tour’s theme, was a selection of movements from Karl Jenkins’ Requiem, along with Mozart’s Ave Verum and three pieces by Thomas Tallis. The Choir also visited the Flemish town of Ypres, the pivotal spot on the Western Front for the British in the First World War. The Choir spent the day visiting various sites around the Ypres Salient, including the awesome Menin Gate and Tyne Cot Cemetery, which is the biggest Commonwealth cemetery in the world. No less than 11,000 soldiers are buried there and another 34,000 names of the missing are commemorated. Here, underneath the name of Old Bloxhamist Lt. Geoffrey Thomas of the Lancashire Fusiliers, ‘Sam Deeley read out the names of those Old Bloxhamists who perished in the Ypres Salient and Georgie Gulliver laid a wreath in their memory. After this short but poignant ceremony, the group returned to Ypres for a nourishing dinner before the culmination of the tour, when the Choir was fortunate enough to sing at the Menin Gate during the nightly Last Post ceremony. On a cold evening, and in front of about a thousand people, we sang two spirituals while Old Bloxhamist Peter Barwell and School Captain Saskia Hall laid wreathes; Saksia’s grandfather’s great uncle’s name is on the Gate along with more than 54,000 British soldiers whose graves are not known, including Old Bloxhamist James Clement Smith of the Royal Fusiliers. After that it was a quick dash to the waiting coach for the exhausted but elated choir, then the long journey back to Bloxham via the Eurotunnel after an unforgettable tour.
To view an album of photos taken whilst on tour, please click here.