All Things Music
London Spotlight #1: Croydon Minster
As we approach our residency in London with excitement, anticipation, and prayers, I wanted to begin this new form of communication by a series of sorts that will highlight the music that the Parish choir is carefully learning for our time in Croydon Minster. I am grateful to Elin, Barbara Sloan, Carolyn, and Fr. Peter as we develop new and effective forms of communication from the Parish and am delighted that my voice is welcomed in weekly communications from the music side of things. This first “series” is called “Spotlights on London” and will dive into the locations, repertoire, and opportunities the choir will have this summer.
While in London we will sing at Croydon Minster. A minster was historically a church that acted, in some ways, as a modern Cathedral does, serving a community as its largest church and were known for monastic lifestyles of clergy living together in communal life maintaining the daily office of prayer. Minsters declined in the 10thcentury with the emergence of local parish churches and has become a honorific title given to certain churches that originate from Anglo-Saxon times, and at this time there are 31 Minster churches in England, with Croydon being elevated to a minster in 2011.
Croydon Minster, though not as well-known as others like Westminster or York Minster, is a church of rich history, a church in Croydon is mentioned in the Domesday Book, a book that surveyed medieval England and Wales from 1086, and the same church is mentioned in a will dated to 960. The current church plant dates from the middle Saxon period around 1347, 438 years before the Episcopal Church was founded in 1785. Croydon Minster is dedicated to Saint John the Baptist. Six Archbishops of Canterbury are buried in the church, Edmund Gabriel (1583), John Whitgift (1604), Gilbert Sheldon (1677), William Wake (1737), John Potter (1747), and Thomas Herring (1757). In the mid-1800s the church was undergoing its first major restoration since being erected in the 11th century, and in January 1857, a major fire broke out and resulted in the gutting of most of the building. It was rebuilt to the original plans by George Gilbert Scott and expanded the church to hold around 1000 congregants, it was reconsecrated by Archbishop Archibald Tait in 1870. It still contains several monuments and fittings from the old building. As I mentioned earlier the church was elevated to the status of Croydon Minster in 2011, the first major change like this to take place in the Diocese of Southwark, where Croydon sits. Croydon Palace, was the residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury from the 13th century to the beginning of the 19th century, and the Bishop of Croydon’s seat is at the minster. Croydon minster today serves as Whitgift School’s chapel, and the director of music serves de facto as the head of music and has done such since the 1500s. The minster observes the inclusive liberal catholic tradition of the Church of England, a tradition that is so like our own Anglo-Catholic identity, embracing diversity, inclusion, and social justice.
Among all the exciting things surrounding this, what I am most thrilled and proud to say is that Saint Andrew’s Parish Choir will be the first American choir to sing at Croydon Minster! There is much more to say but look forward to reading about some of the repertoire we are preparing as we come closer and closer to travelling across the pond!
Faithfully,
Cody Lawyer, Organist and Choirmaster.