+ Bedford Park hymns will celebrate Dame Gillian Lynne, ArtsEd and Richard Briers
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Things are hotting up for the hymn-singing marathon that will take place in St Michael & All Angels Church this Saturday March 1st. After a hectic burst of Hymnathon donations, more than £7,000 has now been raised for the church’s Heritage Fund and the top place has changed three times in two days. On Monday night, ‘Thine Be The Glory’ took the lead. See the latest Top 20 chart (above) and at JustGiving/hymnathon150.
St Michael & All Angels has now revealed the Top 100 hymns to be sung on Saturday, as chosen by the public’s donations to its Heritage Fund. See the full list here. The positions of most of the Top 100 are now fixed (so that the programme can be printed) but people will be able to change the order of the Top 20 with their donations right up to Saturday afternoon.
More local names will be celebrated in the Bedford Park Hour, which will follow the John Betjeman Hour at lunchtime on Saturday.
Dame Gillian Lynne, the award-winning ‘Cats’ choreographer who was a pupil and patron of ArtsEd, the performing arts school, will be remembered in hymns on Saturday. The former Bedford Park resident, who died in 2018, chose four hymns to be sung by ArtsEd pupils and filmed in St Michael’s for a 1988 BBC TV programme, ‘Home on Sunday’. (See still photos to follow.)
Two of these hymns – ‘O God our help in ages past’ and ‘Jerusalem’ – will be sung again on Saturday in a section dedicated to local people and places. As a dancer, Dame Gillian performed at Sadler’s Wells Ballet, the Royal Opera House, the Royal Shakespeare Company and in the West End before changing the face of musical theatre as choreographer of ‘Cats’ and ‘Phantom of the Opera’. See tributes and photograph on the ArtsEd website.
Other Bedford Park names to be remembered in the hymn-singing marathon will include the poets WB Yeats and John Betjeman, the actor Richard Briers and the former vicar of St Michael’s, Canon Jack Jenner, who founded the Bedford Park Festival.
Father Kevin Morris, the vicar of St Michael & All Angels Church, said: “We’re delighted with the support we’re receiving for our Hymnathon, both in the generous donations to our Heritage Fund and the many local people and choirs who have signed up to sing. It will be a joyful occasion and we look forward to remembering Gillian Lynne, John Betjeman, Richard Briers and others from Bedford Park who have made a real difference to people’s lives.”
People who love singing are invited to join in for as long as they like. Refreshments will be on sale throughout the day, including a choice of hot dishes at lunchtime and a delicious Afternoon Tea box.
See latest updates on the Hymnathon 150 page.
‘Hymnathon 150’ will start at 11am on March 1st 2025, and will last until well into the evening, involving several local choirs, including West London Chorus, Hogarth Singers and singers from several Chiswick churches – St Michael & All Angels, St Paul’s Grove Park. It will begin with an hour of the best-known Christmas and Easter hymns and end with a countdown of the top 100 hymns.
The second hour from 12 Noon to 1pm will be devoted to hymns chosen by the poet laureate John Betjeman for his radio series, The Sweet Songs of Zion, later published as The John Betjeman Hymnbook, edited by Stephen Games. See earlier release Hymns and Heritage: John Betjeman’s Bedford Park legacy.
The third hour’s hymns, from 1pm to 2pm, will highlight people and places in Bedford Park, including those named above. It will start with ‘The Church’s one foundation’, sung in 1879 when the foundation stone at St Michael’s was laid by the 3rd Earl Nelson, grandson of the hero of the Battle of Trafalgar.
At 2pm, the singers will begin a five-hour Countdown of the Top 100 hymns, chosen by the public through donations for their favourite hymns. The church is listed Grade II* and donations will go to its Heritage Conservation Fund.
St Michael & All Angels held its first Hymnathon in 1987, singing all 542 hymns in the New English Hymnal which had just been published. That lasted over 30 hours and attracted national publicity, including a front-page picture in the Independent, showing ArtsEd pupils singing. The church did the same in 2012 and 2017 to raise money for its new pipe organ. Read more and see the film of Hymnathon 2017 here.
Further information from Torin Douglas: m 07860 422992
NOTES TO EDITORS
* Hymnathon 150 is one of several events marking the 150th anniversary of Bedford Park being organised by St Michael & All Angels Church and the Bedford Park Society, in conjunction with other local organisations.
* Bedford Park was founded in 1875 as the first garden suburb and its origins were inspired by the Aesthetic Movement of the 1870s. It immediately attracted a community of artists, architects and other aesthetic types and was immortalised in G.K. Chesterton’s story, The Man Who Was Thursday. An advertisement of the time proclaimed it to be “the healthiest place in the world (Annual Death Rate under 6 per thousand)”.
* Bedford Park houses, in the Queen Anne style of architecture, are based on designs by Victoria architects Norman Shaw, E. W. Godwin, E.J. May and Maurice B. Adams. Pretty tree-lined avenues of family homes with gardens were interspersed with artists’ studios. Community buildings, including the Church and Parish Hall, the Stores, a School of Art, the Tabard Inn and the Club, helped to create an integrated ‘village-like’ community, living in ‘sweetness and light’. See Bedford Park Society’s Galleries.
* Among Bedford Park’s ‘progressive’ early residents were the poet W.B. Yeats, dramatist Sir Arthur Pinero, architects C.A. Voysey, Maurice Adams and E.J. May, actors William Terriss and Florence Farr and artists T.M. Rooke and Lucien Pissarro, whose father Camille painted several views from the house.
* It was described by the Poet Laureate and heritage campaigner John Betjeman as “the most significant suburb built in the last century, probably the most significant in the western world.” Bedford Park’s buildings and community spirit became an inspiration and model for the creators of later garden suburbs and cities in Britain and around the world.
* During the 1960s some of the houses were demolished and others increasingly came under threat. In 1967, after a campaign supported by John Betjeman, The Bedford Park Society and St Michael & All Angels Church, Bedford Park became a conservation area. More than 350 houses are listed as Grade II and the church and inn are Grade II*.
* In 1958, John Betjeman was one of the founders of the Victorian Society, which has its headquarters in Bedford Park at 1 Priory Gardens, W4 1TT.
