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A Musical and Social Bonanza
RODERIC DUNNETT continues his
in-depth review of this year's
Three Choirs Festival in Hereford
The Three Choirs Festival, for centuries now the doyen of international choral festivals, was staged this year, 2018, in the resplendent surroundings of Hereford Cathedral. With its dazzling medieval-prototype Mappa Mundi, its Cider Museum and famed half-timbered building (the 'Old House' museum) dating from James I's reign; its modern, spick-and-span Courtyard Theatre; its Roman Roads, beetling west and south, and the River Wye wafting past in summer mood, just as the Severn surges through first Worcester then Gloucester, it's a glorious venue for a week-long festival.
Hereford also has a dark side: not the succulent, ample fruits from varied orchards, its Celtic hillforts to north and south; not even the present day base of the SAS in the Golden Valley making a beeline for the border's Black Mountains: Hereford was home to instruments of war and destruction, with what became the largest shell-filling factory in England, 'Filling Factory No 14', first (1916-19) in the Great War presently being commemorated; and then in World War 2. Such grim, yellow-stained activity was vital to winning both wars, and the sprawling factory was located at Rotherwas, three miles and a mere ten minutes south of the city centre...
Copyright © 4 September 2018
Roderic Dunnett,
Coventry UK
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