Last Sunday evening I was at St Mary's Church in Melton Mowbray to celebrate their Christmas tree festival, and to listen to the Hathern Senior Band playing pieces before and after the service and carols during the service. As ever, they were brilliant, and all in all it was a lovely evening. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend the Loughborough parish church tree festival, so here's some pics from Melton's (with apologies for focusing on the trombone section!):
The day before I had been to a Loughborough Archaeological and Historical Society meeting at which we had a talk on local alabaster: This included a description of alabaster from the area, its uses and its history. A number of local churches contain, amongst other things, alabaster statues, and the church at Tutbury (a place I go to fairly often) was started to be built in about 1086 by Henry de Ferrers and uses alabaster in one of the door arches, has an alabaster coffin inside, as well as an alabaster altar-piece. You can read about the use of alabaster in Loughborough in an earlier post of mine, and if I ever get to see any for real, I'll be sure to take some pics to post on the blog. In the meantime, here's a photograph of some alabaster we saw at the LAHS meeting:
Last evening saw me in the Hodson Hall at the Grammar School, again listening to Hathern Band, this time in their traditional Christmas concerts, featuring lots of exciting Christmas pieces, and a couple of carols. This concerts also features the Training Band and the Concert Brass, all of whom played exceptionally well. If you weren't able to come along to any of the band's concerts, you can find the band's Christmas CD as well as their most recent release on the Hathern Band webpages.
Do you know about the 3 figures in Nottingham Castle found secreted at Flawford Church when its final demolition occurred in 1779?
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