THE modest Horkinstone Baptist Chapel at Oxenhope could muster this impressive choir, photographed in 1906.
Choirmaster Amos Dewhirst sits baton in hand, with organist Victor Sunderland on the left.
Amos Dewhirst, being a newsagent and stationer, could order his choir music through his own shop, his records revealing that in 1906 he bought 26 copies of Shepherd of Souls, They Shall Mount Up and Stand Up, with On the Banks of Allan Water and Ye Mariners of England for secular relief, the latter, with only 13 copies, being sung by men only.
A choir like this occupied a wider sphere than its Sunday services, for chapel formed the centre of its worshippers’ social life. Public teas and Saturday-night concerts were as important as Sunday School anniversaries and missionary Sundays.
For some years the Horkinstone Baptist Chapel choir took part in great non-conformist festivals in London, a demanding experience which necessitated leaving Oxenhope on a Friday night and getting back early on a Sunday morning.
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