Tower and Town, June 2020

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Family News

On May 9th Anne and David Norman held a Zoom first birthday party along with their daughter and her family for their grandson, Theo, who lives in Singapore.  A giant singing Thomas the Tank engine balloon and Happy 1st birthday banner were the backdrop from the Marlborough end while over in Portishead Abigail (aged 5) and Jacob (aged 7) showed baby Theo the colourful birthday cards they had made for the cousin they had only met online.  Locked down in a 7th floor apartment in Singapore with daddy James Norman and mummy Ediana, unable to even go out for walk in his buggy, baby Theo showed off his new teeth and burbled happily.

Chris Horril has sent in this additional piece about his mother: Pamela Horril was the fourth of five children of Mr. Alfred Stedman, headmaster of Marlborough Grammar School, and Mrs Stedman, of Greenlands, London Road Marlborough. After training as a nurse at the Radcliffe Hospital Oxford she married Peter in St. Mary’s church (where her two children, Alison and Christopher, were also later christened). Although she never returned to live in Wiltshire (she spent the rest of her life in Nottingham), her heart was always in Marlborough and the surrounding countryside. Her memories of her childhood remained very vivid. She kept in close contact with some of her classmates all her life.

Roger Wise writes: In 1970 when I was 7 years old, a man called Mr Pomfret came to our morning assembly at St Peter’s junior school and said that he was looking for boys who could sing to join his choir in St Mary’s church. He was very enthusiastic and with parental permission I went along to the church a few days later for a choir practice with some other boys. It was harvest time and we sang, ‘Come ye thankful people come’, which is still my favourite hymn. After a while, we stopped and Mr Pomfret asked me which musical note lasted longest, the completely filled in note (a crotchet) or the one which wasn’t filled in (a minim). I could read no music at that time and so guessed the one which wasn’t filled in was shorter on the basis that it looked less substantial. “Bad luck”, said Mr Pomfret, “It’s the other one”. This was the first lesson of many which Jesse Pomfret was to deliver to me and which I never forgot.

He had a great team of boys who were mostly older than me, some of the stars being James Cowley, Michael Mashiter and Richard Mundy. I went to practices on Monday, Wednesday, Friday evenings, and services twice on Sunday, regularly for the next 6 years for two reasons; the music, and the enthusiasm of Jesse Pomfret which seemed to be almost inexhaustible. His stated aim at each practice was to make it like a performance and he generally succeeded even when we were starting to learn a new piece.

He had a great sense of humour which he needed on one occasion when we decided to hide in the church so that when he arrived for practice the place seemed to be deserted. Jesse would tell us tales of his past, about seeing the Sea of Galilee from the back of an army truck during his national service, and how he shot his first pheasant. When a boy had a birthday, Jesse would bring toffees, and weddings were especially popular with us because we got paid. If you did something good, such as singing well or being first to answer correctly a question about music, you received a “Good point” which was rewarded with a little more pocket money, handed out every few months.

But we didn’t do it for the money. It was really fun. The music was superb and apart from hymns, Jesse taught us to sing psalms (performed at Evensong), and then anthems. Orlando Gibbons, Stanford, Stainer were all composers some of whose major works I knew by the age of nine, and I can still remember.

In addition, Jesse organised other events including a major choir festival attended by several hundred singers from all over Wiltshire (we all giggled when his music stand collapsed during the final rehearsal), and even ice skating trips.

Jesse was also my music teacher at school and his same enthusiasm swept me into a small solo part in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial by Jury, the school orchestra as timpanist, a music ‘O’ level and to several grades on the piano. I am sure now that I would never have achieved these things without him and I will be forever grateful for this musical education.

I found Jesse to be a person who was able to lead very ably through musical ability (we sometimes sang pieces which he had composed), enthusiasm, patience, humour and a strong Christian faith which saw him through some difficult times. He was able to bring the best out of people, and give them the confidence to perform well above their own expectations. He gave a generation of young people in Marlborough the gift of musical appreciation through teaching, being a first rate choirmaster and by example as someone who was single-mindedly dedicated to producing good music through the young people that he taught.

Jessy Pomfret