Carols in the 1980s
Tim Prince (1977-82)

The big event for Christmas time was the carol service.  Mr and Mrs Griffith were convinced that they had hit on a winning formula for this and no attempt by anyone to change it one iota would ever prevail.  The entire hall and lounge area was set out with seating as it was the largest room in the house and able to hold at least one hundred people or more.  The porch was also used as an overflow and seating was available to extend into neighbouring rooms and corridors. 

The rooms were decorated with large amounts of greenery cut from the grounds which actually looked very effective, giving new meaning to the carol ‘Deck the hall with boughs of holly’ for all of us that actually did it.

The service itself was held in the early evening so when everybody was seated all the lights went out and pitch darkness quickly extinguished the murmur of conversation. 

The school was assembled in two lines up on the first floor landing either side of the snooker table outside the four form rooms.  At a given signal a large three-branched candlestick was lit and a soloist began the first verse of ‘O Come all ye faithful’ but sung in that well known Latin version, ‘Adeste Fideles’. 

Carols (Jeremy Batten)

Once the first verse was over the school began to move slowly down either side of the stairs led by the candlestick bearer.  We had two more verses to sing, ending in ‘Venite Adoremus, Dominum’ by which time we all had to be in place in rows on the main stairs that would be our seating, choir at the front and the rest of the school behind.  The lighting in the room would gradually be brought up as we processed down the stairs from the three candles to full brilliance at the moment when the carol ended and everything was in place.  As you can imagine this all took quite some time to practice and get exactly right.  The Griffiths were old hands but each new generation of boys had to learn the pace and when they should be at which point in the song in relation to the stairs.  This was imparted during practice sessions with much chastisement and frustration but somehow or other we seemed to get it in the end, and the sense of relief when we reached that last note on the night and were standing in the right place at the right time was enormous. 

The service continued with many of the traditional carols interspersed with some more unusual songs sung by the boys alone including one in French called ‘Il est nee le divine enfant’.  The usual canon of Christmas readings were stirred into the mix, and finally the school would do a repeat procession back up the stairs to the sound of ‘The First Noel’ to complete the service back on the first floor landing in complete darkness by the time the last verse was finished.

We all had to spend a lesson writing out the order of service and sticking it into an empty exercise book cover for our parents that had to be decorated with pretty Christmas pictures.  It was important not to finish too quickly because those that did found themselves doing another one for any visitors that might be unrepresented amongst the school.  The worst part of it was that Mrs Griffith felt that having all the words typed out on sheets looked untidy so all the words had to be learnt off by heart.  Many nights were spent under the covers repeating carols until they were second nature, but many more should have been spent as there were always a good number of people who didn’t bother to learn them to the extent that they could be sure of them, hence half the school carried the other half.