“Death of a Choir School” : All Saints Margaret Street London 1968 

I am the 'Phillip' - you can imagine my joy at finding this. Thank you.

I attended the Choir School and left as Head Boy and my name is still on the Head Boy's board

I stumbled on this in looking for something else. I now remember my father, Peter, getting the BBC involved and this programme going out. Good to see your comment, Matthew. Perhaps we will meet at a future old choristers' evensong? Christopher (Davies)

I used to worship at All Saints' in days of old. Great worship. This is a gem.

Truly tragic that such a wonderful and spiritual education could not have continued on.Why?

Music beyond words in a magnificent parish. A true loss to the world.

What an amazingly articulate child you were Phillip Nicholl! Just for the record, I'm the treble soloist for the Fauré and the Stanford In G. Not sure about the Mozart, that might have been me too or perhaps William Todd.

This is James Agate. I was a chorister in 1966/7 and then went on to Eton College Choir School, which then closed in 1968! My older brother Nic was also at All Saints, along with John Clough, who we both followed to King's College, Taunton. Is there an old choristers reunion for All Saints?

What a little gem! Thank you for publishing this. (I hope that the unnamed chorister has amended his views on female singers, though :) )

I found this when I was looking for a copy of the record that was issued upon the closure of the school. If I recall correctly the album cover was a photograph of the boys in the yard between the gates and the entrance to the church and I think it was taken after the last Easter High Mass. I was ten when it closed. I used to have a copy but have lost it. If anyone has this LP and can MP3 it, I should be delighted to have a copy.

Very moving, and poignant. I hope a similar fate has not happened to other choir schools since.

P.S what is that sung at appx 25 mins. It is not given by the presenter

Quote from the book The story of Christian music by Andrew Wilson Dickson Lion publishing co published in1992:The City of Stuttgart spends more on the arts in a year than dose the Arts council on the whole of the United Kingdom.For Christian music in Germany a generous scale of funding is raised by a regional income tax. At the time of writing Kirchensteuer Church Tax lies between 8 and 10 per cent of the total tax paid depending on the region.The money raised is divided between the Lutheran ,Roman Catholic and Jewish communities.The Kirchensteuer ,year 1992 raises a large sum well over 100 million DM every year and is used for many purposes: to pay priests on the level of civil servants: pay a living wage to full time organists and choir masters even at parish level:to provide church funded social welfare such as the intensive care of old people and to run church funded hospitals.As a result churches remain important centres for parish life through the vital services they offer.This tax is unaltered to this day. In 1803 the Napoleonic government that ruled over the German states confiscated most of the church lands without payment, in 1815 after Napoleons defeat it was impossible to give the land back so a church tax was raised to pay off the debt which was so large that it is said that it is like paying off the mortgage for a house on fifteen Dollars a year; quite impossible to pay off.

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