Britain's Methodist Heritage

26 January 2018 Our final day in the United Kingdom definitely lived up to the hype. We began our day by heading to Westminster Abbey. This is the site of every single English coronation ever performed. While we were waiting, we were able to take some neat pictures of Big Ben and the London Eye. Sadly, Big Ben was under renovation, so we could not see it in its normal state. When we went inside, we were not able to take pictures, so I had to soak it all in. It was much like most of the other cathedrals that I had visited, but it was different because it was the burial site of many different monarchs, musicians, poets, scientists, and more. Isaac Newton, Charles Dickens, George Handel, and Queen Elizabeth I were many of the historic people buried inside. We also saw many memorials, including those of C.S. Lewis, John and Charles Wesley and Winston Churchill. Sadly, we were not able to see the "Musicians' Corner" due to time constraints, but I'm sure I'll take a

25 January 2018 Our day begin with a trip to Windsor Castle! This is one of the official residences of the British monarch and it has many features, including the state apartments, Mary’s Dolls House, and St. George’s Chapel. While I could not take any pictures inside these attractions, I can say that it is hard to come up with words to describe the fancy living in the state apartments and the amount of gold that was everywhere. While the Dolls House was a little more underwhelming considering I just witnessed the most amount of fanciness in one building ever, it was still cool to see a monarch’s doll collection and to know her husband’s dedication to building the giant house for her dolls. Lastly, St. George’s Chapel was like most of the other chapels I had visited, but it was cool to know that many kings and queens were buried in this building along with Henry VIII, a king that has been a prominent figure in the religious studies portion of our course. 

24 January 2018 We all woke up at six in the morning after a late night at Selwyn College, and we were on our way to St. John’s College to see one of the best choirs in England rehearse—or so we thought. Unfortunately, traffic made us late for our visit and we had to scrap the visit entirely. On a lighter note, our first actual stop of the day was Ely Cathedral. We looked around for a little and then we headed out to explore the city of Ely. A few of us decided to eat at a small diner in which we had a good second breakfast! After walking around Ely and getting caught in a rainstorm on the way back, we fried off and prepared for our concert.  For this concert, we sang in Ely Cathedral’s Lady Chapel, which was a large room with amazing acoustics. Because of the acoustics, we had to take our time, sing slowly, and enjoy the massive echo that occurred after each note. We sang our entire repertoire minus “Make A Joyful Noise” due to the lack of a large organ. We did h

23 January 2018 Today was a very eventful day...well, at least the latter half was. We had a very long drive to Cambridge from Bristol that took even longer than planned because of traffic issues. Yep, there’s no possible way to escape traffic, even if you’re in a different country.  Once we arrived in Cambridge, we stopped at Kings College. We took a self-guided tour of the chapel and saw many of the same things that we would see at other famous churches, including the architecture. This chapel is notable because Henry VI founded the College in which the chapel is located in. After this tour, we had some free time and we decided to visit a music store which took quite a while to find. We saw many awesome things including a £13,000 grand piano!  Our next stop was Selwyn College. We changed into part of our choir robes and were ready to rehearse with the Selwyn College Chapel Choir led by Sarah MacDonald, a very notable woman in English music, which our presentation