Navigation
Link To Our Site
We have a graphical thumbnail that you can use to link to our site.
Read MoreMore Information
If you wish to enquire about Sunday services, Baptisms (Christenings), Weddings or Funerals then please contact us.
Choirs & Music at St. Margaret’s
Brian Shilling
Brian has been the organist and choirmaster
at St. Margaret's for over thirty years.
The Choirs
We have two choirs at St. Margaret's, a Youth Choir (age 6 - 15) and an Adult Choir. We join together for special occasions and most notably at Christmas when we form our Christmas Choir for the ever growing Carols by Candlelight!
The Youth choir meet twice a month on Saturday mornings (9.30am - 10.30am) to rehearse, and they sing during the Family Service on the first Sunday of each month. The RSCM (Royal School of Church Music) Voice for Life awards system is being followed, which gives the children the opportunity to work on various aspects of singing and musicianship in order to gain graded awards, without placing undue strain or a lot of extra work on the children. All of the children in the choir have earned their light blue ribbon and are now working towards their dark blue ribbon or red ribbon which are the next two goals along the way. For more details about the Voice for Life Scheme please click here.
The children have a large repertoire of Unison and two part music which they perform regularly and I think it is fair to say that our favourite of the moment is "The Heavenly aeroplane" by John Rutter!
The Adult choir meets twice a month on Wednesday evenings (7.00pm - 8.00pm) to rehearse, and they sing during Mattins on the second Sunday of each month (9.00am) and the Family Communion service on the third Sunday of each month (10.30am). Some of our members rehearse and sing only once a month in order to fit around their family commitments, so we are a very flexible bunch! We are currently studying singing technique in more depth and are beginning to rehearse simple anthems in four parts in order to extend our repertoire. We are a very supportive group of people and have a lot of fun whilst making the very best sound we can to praise our God.
The Organ
The original organ was built in the latter half of the 19th century by Henry Bevington & Sons. It had one manual and a pedal board. The existing front facade pipes and pedals together with some inside pipes are Bevington's.
In 1911 Norman & Beard pulled the front casing out to make way for additional pipe work. The existing organ still has the two manuals with 11 stops as installed by Norman & beard in 1911.
In 1935 an electric blower was added to the original hand pump.
