THE Wells Cathedral Chorister Trust welcomed their Royal Patron, HRH The Duchess of Edinburgh, to Wells recently. Her Royal Highness visited the new Chorister Trust office and attended a lunch to celebrate the Trust’s latest fundraising initiative, the Coronation Fund.
The Coronation Fund is a special appeal launched in September 2023 to raise £500,000 by September 2025 to support families of talented children requiring 100 per cent bursaries, wishing to become Cathedral choristers.
The Duchess and the Lord-Lieutenant of Somerset, Mohammed Saddiq, were met by Arnold Wills, Chair of Trustees, at the door to Polydor House in The Liberty where the new WCCT office is now located.
The Duchess was shown around the new offices which include posters for past WCCT fundraising events as well as a sequence of photographs of choristers from across the years, and was introduced to a number of people there and in Cedars House and Cedars Hall, including Coronation Fund Donors, Patrons and Trustees, Ambassadors of the WCCT, civic guests and Wells Cathedral School and Wells Cathedral staff.
During a Somerset ploughman’s-style lunch, the Duchess sat with former choristers, Gregory Wills and Maddie Perring, both now studying at music college, and recent leavers and current choristers, Oliver Jenkins, Aleksei Lichter, Rosie Bennett and Estella Fawden. Following lunch, Arnold Wills addressed the guests and the Duchess signed the Visitor’s Book before departing.
• The Cathedral’s annual ‘Be a Chorister for a Day’ event takes place on the third Saturday of September. Children aged between six and nine are invited to go to the Cathedral for the day to find out what it is like to be a Cathedral Chorister. If interested in the next event, contact the Cathedral Music Office via musicoffice@wellscathedral.org.uk