Trio chalk up two centuries of heavenly music

Jim has memories of Elgar:

SOON to celebrate his 99th birthday is James (Jim) Andrews, who achieved the remarkable record of being a church organist in Worcester for three-quarters-of-a-century.

It was on their 22nd wedding anniversary that I went along to chat to Jim and his second wife, Joyce, at their bungalow home in Canada Way, Worcester.

Naturally, in approaching his century, Jim's memories are not quite so sharp as they used to be, but he takes great pride in having played the organ to accompany choirs and congregations at countless services in the Faithful City over a period of 76 years.

As a boy he was given lessons in the "rudiments" of music by a cousin, who was an excellent pianist. "She taught me how to read music, and I was extremely grateful to her for her patient tuition."

Jim's first assignment as an organist came in 1917, when he was just 14. He was invited by the vicar of Kempsey to play at the village church, and cycled over from Worcester on his bike.

However, his first regular appointment as an organist came later in his teens when he appointed to the post at St Andrew's Church, alongside what is now Deansway. The church was pulled down about half-a-century ago to leave only its spire - The Glover's Needle.

Jim remained at St Andrew's for a few years before beginning his longest stint - as organist of All Saints Church for 30 years. After that, he was organist of St Stephen's for five years, then of Powick Church for 18 years, and was finally one of the organists for funeral services at Worcester Crematorium, for some years taking it in turns with the late John Bee, the well-known former Worcester cinema manager and nationally-renowned organist.

Jim Andrews recalls a few meetings with Worcester's most famous son, Sir Edward Elgar. "I was connected with some local musical organisations, such as the Glee Club at the Crown Hotel in Broad Street, to which the composer also belonged."

Elgar's great friend, Sir Ivor Atkins, for 50 years organist of Worcester Cathedral, also chatted to Jim on a number of occasions. "Sir Ivor was a really fine organist."

To Jim, the most memorable service he ever took part in was at All Saints when the legendary Woodbine Willie, the Rev Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, came to preach to a congregation which overflowed into the church gardens and into the street at All Hallows.

"He was a great friend of the vicar of All Saints, and held the congregation spell-bound, speaking from both the pulpit and the steps outside the church.

"He was quite a showman, and I understand he once said: 'How can we preach the Kingdom of God to those folk when they can have little conception of it?' He was pointing to the poverty stricken folk of the teeming tenements of nearby Birdport and Dolday."

Nevertheless, Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy did go out into the streets preaching to them, as he did to the poor people of his own parish - St Paul's, Worcester.

Jim has clear memories too of seeing the city's lined with huge crowds for the funeral of Woodbine Willie in 1929.

Jim was born in June, 1903, the son of William Andrews, a builder, and his wife Hannah. Alas, Jim's mother died when he was only a toddler and he was brought up by his grandparents, James and Rebecca Andrews, at 42 Sidbury, Worcester. His grandfather had his offices at No 42 as a busy local builder, and his grandmother kept a shop on the same premises as a bird dealer, selling the likes of budgerigars, canaries and parrots.

"My grandmother was fond of telling me of the day when a lady came into the shop with a small boy and asked him if he would like her to buy him a canary. He pointed excitedly to one singing away sweetly on a shelf, and the lady pulled out some silver pieces to pay for it. My grandmother placed the bird in a cage, and the boy went off with it in delight.

"It was only later that someone pointed out to my grandmother that the lady had, in fact, been the Countess of Coventry."

Jim went first to the Undenominational School off St Martin's Gate and then to Stanley Road School, and his first job at 14 was as a trainee linotype operator with Berrows Newspapers, which was then based in Broad Street.

However, he only remained there for two or three years before becoming a sheet metal worker with Williamsons at the Providence Works. "My grandfather built that factory," said Jim.

His next job move, when he was aged about 20, was to the Austin Car Factory at Longbridge, Birmingham, where he worked for around 12 years before having other jobs with Eltex at Worcester and with a plastics company at Droitwich.

He married a Worcester girl, Nellie Bennett, and they had two children, Ivor and Hazel. Their family home for several years was at Hanbury Park, Worcester, but Jim was left a widower in the mid-1970s on the death of his wife at the age of 73.

For some years Jim was in the Worcester Operatic and Dramatic Society, singing baritone in the chorus for several productions.

In 1980, he married his second wife Joyce, who was the widow of Ken Green, of Powick. The wedding was at St Peter's, Powick, where Jim was organist.

Alas, Jim has lost both his children. Daughter Hazel (Mrs Digger) of Lechmere Crescent, Worcester, died nine years ago at the age of 63, while son Ivor, a draughtsman of Norton Road, Worcester, died two years ago at the age of 75. However, Jim is able to take comfort in four grandchildren.

He last played the organ in church at the funeral at Hallow of his daughter Hazel.

His favourite hymn has always been How Great Thou Art.

JACK Pritchard, who celebrates his 90th birthday next month, is another local legend, having been a church chorister in and around Worcester for more than 80 years.

He still sings each Sunday in the St John's choir and has also been a verger at the church for a similar length of time - over 20 years.

Jack sang bass in the Worcester Festival Choral Society for nearly half-a-century and, from another of his favourite pastimes, is the proud possessor of a suitcase full of certificates and trophies from his many winning years exhibiting his prize begonias at horticultural shows around the country.

It was only three years ago too, that he retired as a Royal Horticultural Society judge, having travelled all over Britain to adjudicate at flower shows.

John (Jack) Pritchard was born at Old Northwick, Worcester, in June, 1912, the son of George and Lillian Pritchard. His father worked for about 25 years as an organ builder with the renowned Worcester-based organ makers, Nicholsons.

Jack's grandfather, also George Pritchard, lived with his family at the Claines Institute for many years and was for a long time verger and parish clerk at Claines church. He also had a stonemason's yard at Little London, and his daughter Edith ran the Claines Post Office.

Life for the Pritchards centred around Claines church, and Jack followed in his father's footsteps when he joined its choir at the age of nine. His dad had already been a chorister there for 20 years and, as a boy, Jack sometimes helped his father dig graves at Claines and also clean and re-letter gravestones at Worcester's Astwood Cemetery.

Jack's education was at Claines School, where the headmaster was Charles Baker, a widely-respected local personality, who was also the church choirmaster.

"I really enjoyed school, and I used to cry because I could not go on Saturdays," recalls Jack.

For 25 years, he lived with his parents at Bevere Green and, on leaving school, he found a job with Mr Barnard at Bevere Green Farm, "milking cows seven days a week for five shillings".

After about two years, he moved to a better paid job, earning seven shillings a week, making milk deliveries from another Bevere dairy.

"I first had to learn how to carry two milk buckets on the handlebars of my bike!"

Jack was next a garden boy for the Wallace family at Hawford House, earning 13/6d a week, and, after nearly four years, became gardener to Dr Foster, a Worcester GP, who lived near Inkberrow. He cycled there from Bevere every day.

Then came what turned out to be the main chapter in his working life. He moved to a job at Porter's Mill, near Droitwich and, in 1939, married Lavinia Price, housekeeper to the Jackson family, who owned Porter's Mill for many years.

Jack soon worked his way up to being in charge of the mill which produced significant quantities of seed corn and animal feeds. He was to be at Porter's Mill for 35 years and was appointed to its board of directors.

During the Second World War, Jack combined his "reserved occupation" with service as a corporal in the Home Guard at Droitwich.

He and wife Lavinia made their first home at Newland Common, Droitwich, but later moved to a cottage at Ladywood, where Jack was able to pursue his love of horticulture in his one-and-a-half acre garden and paddock. He was soon specialising in growing begonias and began entering them for local horticultural shows to winning effect.

Then, together with Doug Holloway of Leigh Sinton, he started mounting large-scale begonia exhibits at prestigious national shows and, with the very first, carried off a gold medal at the Shrewsbury Show. "We got to be very friendly with that show's chairman Percy Thrower, who was a lovely chap," says Jack.

His many certificates, medals and other trophies from his winning years at flower shows, including the former annual City of Worcester Show at Pitchcroft, fill a large suitcase at his home. Jack was on the committee of the Droitwich Horticultural Society for a long time, and he was an RHS judge for about 15 years.

But back to Jack's remarkable record as a church chorister. He moved from Claines to the Salwarpe Church choir, and also became a parish councillor and school governor.

He was next in the St Peter's choir at Worcester for several years until this church in the shadow of the Cathedral was pulled down, and then followed a long stint in the All Saints Church choir.

And for the past 22 years, he was been in the St John-in-Bedwardine Church choir, also serving as a verger for funerals and other services and still driving his car to and from the church.

During his 47 years in the Festival Choral Society, Jack sang, in turn, under the eminent Worcester Cathedral organists Sir Ivor Atkins, Sir David Willcocks, Christopher Robinson, Douglas Guest and Donald Hunt.

Choral works by the old masters such as Bach, Handel and Mozart are among Jack's favourites, particularly The Messiah for which he has been in the chorus dozens of times.

One of Jack's most memorable moments came when the Festival Choral Society performed The Music Makers at a special Elgar celebration concert in the Royal Albert Hall, before the Prince of Wales. Jack was among those presented to Prince Charles afterwards, being one of the society's longest serving members.

Jack's wife Lavinia died in 1975, after they had been married 36 years. When his career at Porter's Mill finished, Jack was in charge of first aid at the Nu-Way Heating factory at Droitwich for about 10 years.

One of Jack's cousins is former Worcester mayor and businessman, H J (Bert) Evans who is now 98, and living at Christchurch, near Bournemouth, Hampshire. Jack's late brother George worked for some years at Bert Evans' County Magneto shop in Sidbury, Worcester.

* Gerald's played the right notes for 50 years

STILL very much enjoying one of the great loves of his life - music making - is 81 years-old Gerald Hill, who has now been organist at the Worcester Baptist Church in Sansome Walk, for more than half-a-century.

Gerald is also fondly remembered by thousands of ex-Worcester schoolboys from his 35 years as the popular music master at the city's former Samuel Southall School.

"From a small boy, I was determined that music should be a central part of my life - I was always single-minded about it and was dead keen on playing the organ," says Gerald. "It has therefore been a great happiness to me that for so much of my life I have been able to teach music and to play the organ."

He was born in Hereford, the son of railway employee Benjamin Hill and wife Ruth, who were both devoted members of the Baptist Church. Gerald first learned to play the organ as a boy at Chippenham, Wiltshire, and served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War, mostly as a signaller on Atlantic convoy duties.

On de-mob, he decided on a teaching career and, in the late 1940s, was among the first intake of students to the "new" Worcester Teacher Training College in Oldbury Road (now University College Worcester). He also met and married Worcester girl Gwen Hill, a teacher, and set up home in St Michael's Road, later moving to their present home in Elizabeth Avenue.

On qualifying as a teacher, Gerald joined the staff of the Samuel Southall School and was to remain there as music master throughout his 35 years in teaching. He formed the school's brass band and still remembers how grateful he was to the Worcester Evening News for printing a feature highlighting their fund-raising campaign to buy instruments.

Gerald is also extremely proud that the Samuel Southall boys' choir competed at the prestigious Cheltenham Festival for 13 years and carried off the winners' cup no fewer than 10 times.

He remembers too, when the school leaving age was raised and the voices "broke" of some boys in the Samuel Southall choir. It enabled him to introduce a four-part ensemble and tackle well-known choruses from such choral masterworks as Haydn's The Creation.

"These performances at speech days and the like certainly made quite an impression and, to this day, old boys from that time still come up to be in the street and say how vividly they recall taking part," says Gerald. Overall, he remembers Samuel Southall as having been "a happy school" and is always glad to meet up with his former pupils.

From the day he moved to Worcester in the mid-1940s, Gerald regularly attended the Sansome Walk Baptist Church, and it wasn't long before his musical talents as an organist were discovered. The Minister at the time was the Rev. C C Chambers, and both he and his two sons were accomplished organists.

In fact, it was one of them - John Chambers - that Gerald Hill succeeded as the church's organist and choirmaster at the end of the 1940s to begin his "reign" at the keyboard which now extends beyond 50 years.

Gerald points out that when he took up the post, the church had a Hammond organ which, though then the "king" of electronic instruments, was not considered by him nor the Rev Chambers to be ideal in a church setting. The anomaly was made more glaring by the fact that standing splendidly above the altar was a superb Nicholson organ case, installed many years ago by the renowned Worcester-based organ-making company.

Eventually, however, a pipe organ was re-introduced in 1975, being expertly built by Peter Hutchins of Coleford in Gloucestershire. Not long afterwards, Gerald was proud to play at two evening services broadcast by the BBC from the Sansome Walk Baptist Church.

He naturally mourns the loss of the church's choir which sang for the last time in 1998 after 100 years. For some time up until then, he had occasionally put together an inter-denominational choir of 60 voices to sing Stainer's Crucifixion and other religious choral works.

One of Gerald and Gwen Hill's two sons, Jonathan, has followed in his father's footsteps. He is head of the music department of a Redditch school and is also in regular demand as a music conductor around the region. The Hills' other son, Stephen, is in banking at Southampton.

* Jack's eight decades of singing with church choirs