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.
10 out of 10 to the soloists!!
They are incredible!!!
Top notch! Well done everybody.
Lovely singing but surely this is only snippets-can we have the full monty!
May God bless you all.
Seriously good stuff!
I thoroughly enjoyed every time I went to the
rehearsals and as for the ‘real thing’ well …………..
I am thrilled to see such committed young people to
keep us, the older generation aglow with good quality
skilled musical performances.
You will be blest for your many hours of input.
Amazing what is possible when we have the same goal
and work together to complete a challenging task.
You must have worked very hard to achieve such ex-
cellent skilled music pieces with so many parts and all
the clear voices to be heard, especially the sopranos.
Keep up the good work.
We would like to hear more!!!
You lot r amazing!!!
keep it up….
It’s really excellent to see what can happen when so many different characters decide to share a vision, work amazingly well together and put everything into it – a massive well done to all!
Special congrats to Tom for his commitment, excellent leadership, whatever-it-takes attitude and behind-the-scenes slog that has turned out such a resounding success!
oh whad, thad iz amaizing! 🙂
…wow this is incredible – a tribute to Nikki N for her hard work on the choir over the years building their confidence – and then thanks to Nikki G for bringing this together – in the midst of preparing for another important occasion!
welldone everyone; Zac B, Chester D, Clay B, Duncan F, Regan P, Jordan H, Rowan D, Anton S, Doug F, Tom B, Cheyenne B, Narelle P, Georgie D, Chloe H, Nikki H, Rozy F, Dani D, Bonnie S, Amanda D, Davina P, Emma H and Gemma D!
go 4 it Bedfordians 🙂
incredible solos & harmonies – especially soprano! WELLDONE to Georgie D, Jordan H, Rozy F & Anton S – having just one single voice singing just a small part of a hymn is amazing – just stops you & makes you think about their real meanings…
Thankyou again – you have brightened many more people’s days than you originally set out to…
These are the most moving videos
Contrary to another comment I think it is better without drums or accompaniment – the purity of the voices particularly the girls’ comes to the fore
Well done for what must have been hours of practice
Wish I was younger and could enter into such an occupation now!!
yes it is, we did Colours of the wind for our choir song, and it reminded me of the day we left primary school for ever, because we sang that song then,
wow amazing!!!
is there any more recordings of them!!
Incredible!!
WOW! :):) pretty cool!
awesome singing.
GREAT SINGING AND SOLOS.
Opposite of Belsen, part of the organization that killed about two-thirds of European Jews. Still, whatever anyone says, those who fled Nazi oppression for these shores have enriched our culture. Almost all are ever grateful to a country and people that took them in and allowed them to prosper, even if some felt the need to change their surname to something that sounded British!
Did you know a 15 year old girl died at Belsen just before the British Army arrived? Anne Frank was just one of over a million children who perished but her diary lives on in 67 different languages. May this book alone help ensure history does not repeat itself.
Keep up the singing. Look forward to more visits you can video.
Remarkable brethren war service. You can understand why some of those old medics found it hard to talk about Belsen and what they had to do. Horrific. Aside from starvation and thousands of unburied dead, the camp was rife with the most virulent disease known to man at that time and records show a further 28,000 inmates died after liberation as they were so ill.
Colonel J A D Johnstone, Royal Army Medical Corps, described what he saw at the camp when he arrived:
“I saw a very great number of dazed, apathetic, human scarecrows, wandering around the camp in an aimless fashion, dressed in rags and some even without rags. There were piles of dead everywhere – right up to the front gate.”
Goodness graciousness my dear chaps – terrific – if I’d been in the area and heard about it I’d have been found on the grounds, this time not pretending to be younger than I am…
The girls are super but we also enjoy the solos by the young gentlemen. Never knew young Biggles was a singer!!!
FLIP………….you bunch r clearly amazing:):):)
Can’t wait to see some of you in real life again!
who are the girls who sing the solo’s??
is one of them Georgi Denny??? from Bedford??? I would like to know as well
Georgia Denny & Sum1 Ford if tht helps!
Georgia Denny and Roslyn Ford
Excellent! Well done all of you!
Very well done, singing is beautiful. Solo’s are amazing. Look forward to hearing some more sometime… 🙂