Biggleswade Campus Uplifts Milton Ernest Care Home
A choir of some current and former Focus Students from Biggleswade School Campus revisited Milton Ernest Hall Care Home to encourage and uplift the elderly residents. The care home staff and residents enjoyed the music and asked the choir to come back, maybe in the summer.
The students practise together and some of these sessions are held at the school campus, with the doors open for all to attend and enjoy the music.
Most visitors find Milton Ernest Hall fascinating. It is the only country house designed and built by the noted Gothic architect Sir William Butterfield whose “structural polychromy” with variegated brick banding became the fashion of the late Victorian period. The Gothic Revival was in its heyday between 1855 and 1885 and this Grade 1 listed building built in 1865 is a good example of the era.
The students also learnt that Milton Ernest Hall was used as a HQ by the Allied Forces in WW2. They found the small plaque that remembers those who served at this grand yet covert building close to Thurleigh Airfield. RAF Thurleigh hosted American B-17 Flying Fortress aircraft of the 8th Air Force during the war. 171 aircraft failed to return and there is a small museum on the airfield containing a Remembrance Book to all the young men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice.
Some of the student’s ancestors were in the Allied Forces and the conductor’s elderly great grandfather is a former WW2 medic who spent most of the war in uniform. He was on the last boat out of Dunkirk, landed in Normandy D Day+3, survived Arnhem and carried on into Germany, finally caring for the emaciated survivors from Bergen Belsen. The British were the first to enter a death camp and first-hand accounts of mass graves, piles of corpses, and ‘living skeletons’ spread quickly around the world.
awesome singers. keep it up
incredible singing!!!!!!!!!!
keep it up guys
that is epic!!….specially the soloists
what are the lyrics to ‘impossible dream’?
wow, this is so good. i listened to each song about 2 times over.
wow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Lovely Christian encouragement.
Keep up the kindness Biggleswade Campus.
what can i say?… Awesome singing etc….
Wow, Good old RRT!! Keep up the smashing work!
Georgie!! your voice is AWSOME!
Well done!
keep it up.
wow this is incredible! esp. ‘Home’. never fails to send shivers down my spine… lovely, can we have some lyrics?
Home (The Arms of God)
Ev’ry heart without a home
Ev’ry widow left alone
Ev’ry soul that is distressed, there is rest
Ev’ry prayer that has no voice
Or the freedom to rejoice
From the darkness be released; there is peace
There is peace, there is rest
There is hope for the broken
There is help for the weak
There is peace, there is rest
And the arms of God will hold you all the way
Ev’ry sinner who’s confessed
But still in guilt oppressed
By the sin that’s been erased, there is grace
When the father’s walked away
And the mother’s left to pray
When the child has been disowned, welcome home
Welcome home, welcome home
Your sins have been forgiven
Your stains washed away
Welcome home, welcome home
And the arms of God will lead you all the way
Welcome home, welcome home
All your stains washed away
Welcome home, welcome home
You’ll be led all the way
Ev’ry soldier tired from war
Who’s been shaken to the core
Rise on strength that is not your own, and come on home
Come on home, come on home
And the arms of God will guide you all the way
Ev’ry heart without a home
Ev’ry widow left alone
Rise on strength that’s not your own, and welcome home