Leatherhead Parish Church

from the April parish magazine 2005
Bridgend & District Male Choir On Saturday 5th March the roof of the Church was nearly lifted clean away on the visit of the Bridgend & District Male Choir. An appreciative audience listened enthralled for two hours to a mixture of church, opera and folk music sung in Welsh, English and German. Afterwards the Choir and some of the audience enjoyed a supper, interspersed with spontaneous outbursts of more Welsh songs, including a wonderful rendering of Happy Birthday to Hedley. The choir left promising to return one day and with all their CDs sold - apparently this has never happened before!

The evening could not have been so successful without so much help and I must thank everyone who was involved in getting this first venture of Concerts In Church "off the ground". A very big thank you to Alison, Bernard, Ron and Sonia who did most of the publicity and organisation; to Jane who performed miracles in the kitchen and to all those who supplied food and came to help serve it and to wash up.

Thank you also to Martin for arranging the Bar so efficiently and to extremely good effect and to John and Jay who took on any odd job that was going - and there were plenty of those - and who were still smiling at the end. Mollie Lewis very kindly arranged the Mothering Day posies a day early for us, and I must not forget Hawkins Funeral Directors and The Theatre who, between them, provided the conductor with a podium. We are most grateful to our local sponsors, FD Ayton, Buchanan & Curwen, Corbett's Bookshop, Howell-Jones Partnership, The Swan Centre Management, and RT Waters Ltd, without whom the whole event would not have been possible. However, I must add that we made over £1000 for Church funds, the purpose of the exercise, and for that we must thank everyone who came to support us. It is an amazing and magnificent result.

There will be more concerts in the future. If anyone knows of a group that would like to use the Church as a venue, please ask them to contact us. Watch this space. Frances Presley and the Committee of Concerts in Church