Wimbledon Choral Society

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Where it all started ...

The earliest evidence of the origins of the choir can be found in an edition of the weekly local newspaper The Wimbledon Courier dated Saturday 3 April 1880, advertising the first concert on Monday 5 April (see below left).  In the next edition of the paper, the following week, the choir received its first press write-up, an extract from which appears below right.   The text is retyped underneath if the image is difficult to read.

"Considering the toil and turmoil of an election day, Monday was not the best evening for the Society's Concert.   However, Lord Beaconsfield had not consulted our choral friends when he fixed the Dissolution of Parliament, and they in their ignorance fixed the evening of their very excellent display on the polling day for our division of the county.   Still, notwithstanding the noise and uncertainty outside, a large and fashionable assemblage met in our new Drill Hall to hear the first concert given by the Wimbledon Choral Society.   We can, without flattery, report an unqualified success, and can honestly congratulate Mr. Kingsbury and his choir on the favourable impression they have made on all that listened to them.   We shall have something to say next week on the educational tendencies of choral societies, and the benefits they confer on a district, not only to the audiences, but even more to those forming a choral society.   Meantime we confine ourselves to the Monday concert.   The programme opened with a piece from the Messiah "Lift Up Your Heads", which was capitally given by the newly formed choral society.   In the first part they also sung J.L. Hatton's "Shirley Anthem" and Handel's "Hallelujah".  In part two, the following part songs were really finely given.  Mendelssohn's "Awake the starry midnight hour", "Good morrow" and Pinsuti's "Good night beloved" which concluded this excellent concert."

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