Concert in Celebration of Susanna Wesley
13th October
7:00pm -At Epworth Wesley Memorial Methodist Church.
Join us for a concert to celebrate the 350th birthday of Susanna Wesley. With a performance by the Isle Choral Singers.
Admission is £7.00 and is pay at the door.
Refreshments will be provided.
For more information, such as contact details for Epworth Old Rectory and the Isle Choral Singers, please see the poster.
Rehearsals for the concert are going well!
350th Anniversary Concert Underway
Isle Choral Singers are preparing to give a fundraising concert as their final public performance of the year which will also be the last event for Epworth Old Rectory celebrating the 350th anniversary of the birth of Susanna Wesley. Susanna was the mother of John and Charles Wesley, the two youngest of her sons, who founded what later became the worldwide Methodist Church. The Wesleys, lived in Epworth for almost forty years until Samuel’s death in 1735, when they had to leave their home, the Rectory, for the next incumbent of St Andrews Church.
The Old Rectory have held a number of birthday celebrations throughout this year, all of which have had a large element of community involvement, and this concert will be no exception to that as the members of the Isle Choral Singers are all local people and it will be taking place in Epworth with the aim of helping to raise enough much needed money to decorate a room in the Rectory with a replica of the wallpaper once used by the Wesley family to decorate a room in their home.
A small fragment of wallpaper was discovered in the house when doing some research work on the garret stairs which was later verified, by the Victoria & Albert Museum, as being right for the period of Wesley residence in the Rectory. The plan is to recreate, in a small room, that wallpaper, to give a better impression of what the house could have looked like. It will have to be specially commissioned wallpaper so will probably cost the equivalent amount that it would have cost Samuel Wesley back in the eighteenth century. Wallpaper was a hand made luxury item then, and as this will be a one off special design it will be a costly item.
The Isle Choral Singers are rehearsing hard for their performance on the 13th October and will be singing a varying programme for what everyone hopes will be a large audience who can appreciate good music. Rehearsal last night, the 30th September, was a very relaxed affair and started with a few verses of some of their golden oldies as a warm up then soared into the beautiful strains of Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring, before going on to more of the planned programme.
As someone who intends going to the concert, and not wanting to spoil the anticipation I left at that point and I am certain I will enjoy their entire performance on the night, as will any of you who purchase your tickets. The concert is on Sunday 13th October at 7pm in Wesley Memorial Methodist Church, costing £7 for admission and refreshments, payable at the door on the night. The singers all look forward to entertaining as many of you as possible on the night – do come and say hullo.
Cath Fordham
Celebrating Susanna, Community, Public
