Patronal Festival of the Year 2025

By unanimous decision, the Trustees of the Choral Evensong Trust have awarded the inaugural Patronal Festival of the Year Award to the church of St Nicholas, Kittisford. An article published in Church Times can be found here. Donate to make further grants possible here.

Dr Rupert Sheldrake, one of the trustees notes the festival will be "an inspiration to many other parishes in the coming year, particularly because of the high degree of community involvement". Dr Sheldrake noted the church's inclusion of bell-ringing, a community choir, the inclusion of young people, a visiting music student choir and school choir, and also the church's featuring the festival on local radio.

Their full report is below:

Thanks to a grant from the Choral Evensong Trust we were able to celebrate our Patronal Festival this year with a full programme of activities and celebrations throughout the weekend which engaged the local community in ways they would not have imagined.   

On Saturday the 6th December we welcomed a recently formed octet, called Bute Voices, from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff. Members of the hamlet of Kittisford generously hosted the visitors who stayed for the weekend. On Saturday evening, Bute Voices performed a programme of a cappella music to a church filled to close to capacity (an audience of 70 people). The audience were transfixed by the performance and you could hear a pin drop during the singing of “Steal Away”. It was a truly memorable performance and it brought people to St Nicholas who had never been to the church before. The audience gave a generous sum of £270 to the charity “Music in Schools”. The concert was recorded to be broadcast by our local 10 Radio on the internet.

The performance on Saturday was the prelude to the main events which followed on Sunday. Beginning at 12 noon, the music director, Alexander Douglas, gave a two-hour workshop to 25 members of the community who came to learn the music which had been specially written for the Choral Evensong. An additional grant had been made by the Diocese of Bath and Wells to create music for Psalm 68, Magnificat, Nunc Dimittis, the Lord’s Prayer and the responses. Meanwhile, the choir of Rockwell Green Primary School were rehearsing the psalm which had been written for them.  

At 3.30 pm all the moving parts of the jigsaw came together and our publicity campaign had more than done its job. A team of local bell ringers climbed the tower to ring the bells and herald the start of our Choral Evensong. It was all part of the magical experience, especially for many of our visitors who are not regular churchgoers. St Nicholas usually sees a congregation of about 10 on a good day. On Sunday 7th December, we counted 95 people in the church. We were delighted to welcome lots of parents of the children in the choir, people from other churches in the Benefice, the Archdeacon of Taunton and people from the wider community who had never been to St Nicholas before. The church was decorated for Christmas by the local community and everyone was made to feel very welcome by our priest, Rev. Andy Barton. 

During the service we were treated to Psalm 68 sung beautifully by the choir of Rockwell Green Primary School and the anthem, Ubi Caritas, sung by Bute Voices. The music learnt during the workshop by Bute Voices and the community meant that the sounds of the Evensong Liturgy were sung with confidence as well as meaning. During the address, children from the congregation went out to the church porch to see if St Nicholas had indeed left a treat in the shoes they had left there. They were not disappointed; St Nicholas had made a visit. The service was recorded by 10 Radio and will be broadcast on the internet as their Evensong services on December 10th and 13th December. 
After the service we all made our way to Kittisford House Barn nearby and enjoyed a celebration meal of baked potatoes, and fillings followed by apple crumble and ice cream. It was a wonderful end to a truly uplifting festival weekend. Over the weekend we welcomed over 150 people to our little rural church and put Choral Evensong on the map.

We don’t know all that will come out of this weekend but what we do know is that in 2026 Kittisford will be hosting Choral Evensong each month for the Benefice and above all that the community enjoyed coming together and we have made connections with people of all ages from 4 to 97 in our local area and beyond.   

Quotes, “That was a truly stunning bit of singing! We thoroughly enjoyed the recital.”

“Many thanks for successfully organising such a wonderful and memorable Patronal Festival weekend.”

“What a triumph in so many ways. Thank you for including us. Please let us know how to donate as we were swept out of the door last night on a tide of folk surging toward the promise of a baked potato at the top of the hill.”

“Well done for setting up and enabling a hugely successful Benefice event. We enjoyed the company of our guests who brought some youthful enthusiasm into our home.”