A HANDWRITTEN note in the Chapter service book of St Davids Cathedral, from 20 April 1966, reveals a moment of unexpected ecclesiastical and social history. The organist and music director, Peter Boorman, had scribbled in the record: “Boys did not arrive — used six girls from Ysgol Dewi Sant.” That day, in Britain’s smallest city, the girls became what are believed to be the first female singers in a British cathedral choir.
The event 60 years ago came about owing to a set of extraordinary circumstances. On the evening of 20 April, St Davids Cathedral was the venue for the BBC Home Service broadcast Choral Evensong. Mr Boorman had taken up his position in St Davids in 1953, but struggled for a decade to recruit boy choristers. On that particular Wednesday, calamity struck when it emerged that no boys were available, owing to an outbreak of measles in local primary schools.
Seeking a speedy solution, Mr Boorman approached the girls’ choir at the nearby secondary school Ysgol Dewi Sant, under the stewardship of the music teacher and cathedral sub-organist Rosalyn Charles. The Dean of the cathedral, Canon Edward Jenkins, and the headmaster of Ysgol Dewi Sant, David James, understood the urgency of the situation, and permitted the six girls to be excused from class to rehearse.
The broadcast went ahead as planned, much to the relief of the clergy and Chapter. Three months later, the Chapter approved the admission of girls into the choir as full choristers.
Meg Rees, who was a chorister at St Davids much more recently, from 2014 to 2018, has become an expert on the story, after coming across it in her research for her dissertation as part of her music degree at Bristol University.
“I had no idea until I researched the topic that the girls were introduced so much earlier than in other institutions across the UK, which was wonderful, and I thought, ‘Why hasn’t anybody written about this? This is definitely one for the history books.’ Peter Boorman had a real recruitment crisis for boys in the choir. He would call families to ask about their sons, and even made a recruitment poster saying, ‘Boys Wanted: Alive, Desperate’, parodying the old Wild West.”
She believes that there were two main reasons that it was so difficult to find boy choristers at the time. “Firstly, St Davids didn’t have a cathedral choir school, and therefore no flow of boys coming in, and, secondly, it was a farming community, and many boys were expected to go out and help with farming, which was paid, and became a more attractive activity for boys.”
Her dissertation, “Welcomed with Open Arms: Girl choristers in St Davids Cathedral”, was based on interviews with former choirgirls, and Rosalyn Charles. Ms Rees says that it is “really special” that St Davids was so ahead of the curve. “Local people should be proud of it. It speaks to the relationship between the cathedral and the local community, because to do that back in the 1960s was virtually unheard of.”
Her Ph.D. research suggests that such acceptance might not have happened in a large cathedral city. “There was a real backlash when girls came into Salisbury Cathedral Choir in the 1990s,” she says. “People were saying this was the end of cathedral choirs as we know it. The response in St Davids was dramatically different. Those that sang in St Davids were well known and respected members of the community — the local butcher, people who worked on the lifeboat. They were grateful the girls were able to come and continue the music making of the choir.”
ROSALYN CHARLES, now 84 and based in Haverfordwest, grew up on a farm in Pembrokeshire, and was just 22 when she arrived as a music teacher at Ysgol Dewi Sant in 1964. She immediately set up a choir and music society, bringing in professional instrumentalists to accompany the school choir on ambitious pieces such as Bach’s cantatas.
She has fond memories of the live broadcast when Mr Boorman sent out an SOS. “The girls didn’t have any background in church music or the order of evensong; so it was quite challenging for them, but I was fairly confident of their ability to sightread. They had to learn pretty fast. I was singing with them as support.”
The choir at St David’s in the 1960s
She was aware that the request for the girls to sing was unusual. “I did realise it was quite a departure from the norm at the time, but it worked out very well, and they continued with girl choristers from that time. All the local people were happy with the girls’ going into the choir.”
Many radio listeners believed that they were listening to a male choir, Ms Charles says. “Peter had a letter after the broadcast from an eminent organist, congratulating the boys on their tone quality, which shows the girls did very well. They’d never sung canticles, responses, or psalms; so they had to pick it up very rapidly.”
Ms Charles attended a reunion evensong on Sunday 19 April in St Davids Cathedral to mark the 60th anniversary of the girls’ debut. “I wondered if the girls would recognise me: I hadn’t seen some of them since they were 17 or 18.”
After her time at St Davids, Ms Charles went to Edinburgh University to do a Master’s degree in organ music before going on to teach at Reigate Grammar School, in Surrey. Many of her students, including the opera singer Stephen Richardson, went on to have careers in music, as did some of the St Davids choirgirls.
ANN SHUTTLEWORTH, whose father was churchwarden at the time and who was christened, confirmed, and married in St Davids Cathedral, was one of the original six who sang in the live broadcast. “I remember we performed in the choir rather than the nave, but it wasn’t a big thing that the girls were going to sing in the choir. I don’t remember it being exciting. I just remember it being, ‘Oh, we’re singing.’
“Singing was something we did. Other people might have found it hilarious, but my sisters and I always sang, and in the car we’d be singing the Magnificat after joining the choir. I have great memories of Peter Boorman, who wasn’t just an organist. He played French horn and double bass, and he used to let us try and play them in the canonry. I always felt it was an enormous privilege.”
Mrs Shuttleworth says that she was not really aware of the groundbreaking nature of their presence in the choir. “I remember going somewhere which declared it the first place to have girls in the choir — Salisbury Cathedral, I think — and I thought, ‘No you weren’t: we were!’ There wasn’t a fuss, because it was our parish church. It wasn’t a big deal, and we didn’t have a choir school; so it didn’t ruffle any feathers.”
Jane Leggett, now 74, was one of the first girls to take up a permanent place in the choir soon after the 1966 event. Her first memories of singing in the cathedral choir come from the summer of 1967, when she was 16. Now based in Aberystwyth, she describes the choir experience as something that has served her for a lifetime.
Courtesy of Rosalyn CharlesYsgol Dewi Sant School Choir in 1969. Rosalyn Charles stands on the left. Jane Leggett is on the front row, fifth from the right.
“It was a tremendous experience, really, and I valued it enormously then; and, quite frankly, I’ve valued it throughout my life. I was the first person to do A level music at the school, and we had an inspirational teacher in Rosalyn Charles. The whole thing made a huge difference for me, because I went off to study music at university, then became a classroom music teacher myself.
“I was aware that it was quite unusual at the time. It was a very practical reason that the girls started to sing, because there weren’t enough boys, and Peter Boorman knew there were girls at the school with reasonable music-reading skills. We were definitely well aware that we were going into a very special tradition, where boys were the choristers. It was exciting for us at the time: the opportunities it gave us.
“I wouldn’t have known this music, but we started to sing Britten, and were brought into liturgical repertoire, which I don’t think we’d have experienced otherwise. We got to read music, which is so good for singers, and I’ve also been grateful for that. When you’re brought up ‘falling off the edge of Wales’, you’re very grateful for that opportunity.”
Mrs Leggett attended and enjoyed the reunion evensong last month, as ex-choristers sang with the current choir — although this time she was singing lower alto instead of soprano. “It was a great honour to go back and sing, and very moving.”