I identify this photograph as taken in 1957 probably soon after I had been persuaded to take up the position of organist and choirmaster at St Mark’s Church in the Marylebone Road, just around the corner from where we lived in Harcourt Street. I was also part-time Deputy Director of Music for the Parks Department of the London County Council, a post I had occupied since 1954. My ‘daytime job’, dating from 1956, was as the inaugural Music Master at the Central Foundation Boys’ Grammar School in Cowper Street, City of London. I guess we were able to get away for a few days because there was a gap between the end of the season for the LCC and the beginning of the autumn term at Cowper Street.
We were in Hereford because the records showed that the Mr Dr John Bull I was interested in had been a choirboy in the cathedral there. The reference books also showed that this particular John Bull was a son of Wellow in Somerset. They were wrong! Dear old chatterbox Anthony à Wood had confused ‘my’ Dr Bull was a similarly named young man who’d been at Brasenose. I’d looked up the wills from Wellow and they didn’t fit the picture of an eminent London-based musician. And the day before we set out I’d tracked down the descendants of the Brasenose John Bull to Parkers bookshop on the corner opposite Blackwells in Broad Street. Off we went. Just the same.
The elderly cathedral librarian had been very courteous, very helpful. He showed me the old record books and would send me a quarter-plate photograph of the entry about John Bull’s appointment as organist there. Then I went on a tour of the building to absorb the atmosphere.
To this photographer in 1957, the Lady Chapel at Hereford posed two problems. The stained glass in the windows needed to be rendered by using an exposure meter to decide on the right aperture. The detail of the altar called for the use of a flashbulb. I consulted my charts and here is the result. Not perfect but enough to carry memories with it when it comes up now and again in the slide show in the corner of my screen.
The horizon is a bit lop-sided. I propose to put that right when I’m more competent with Gimp!
francis cameron, oxford, 10 february 2011
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