ISSUE 4 – NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014 – FREE
Ludlow YFC turns 70 Controversial chef of Broad Street Exploring the largest organ in the county Letters from the front Town’s tight wearers of 1968 Kitchen table industries Downing pints and dominoes Ludlow legend William Parks
“I love it when I have to open something like a business account, and it says ‘when was your organisation founded?’ And you put 1199” You’ve probably seen him darting about the place, from church office to the church itself, with no idea what this man really does. Well, his name is Shaun Ward, St Laurence’s Director of Music, who (under the relatively calmer wing of the Venerable Colin Williams, the Rector) stands as a wild and energetic man dressed in a Donegal tweed three-piece. Full in beard, and unlike anyone else in town, he plays the mighty Snetzler organ of Ludlow like Animal of The Muppets plays the drums. He’s equally energetic when it comes to showcasing the past wonders and even greater possibilities for Ludlow’s towering church too. Whether voicing vision with a passion to the planning authorities or to the endless visitors that trundle through the church doors each year, Shaun continually switches between two critical hats. In one bonnet he spends a couple of days overseeing
the provision of music – from weekly services to the recruitment and training of choristers. The rest of his week is taken up with building affairs: planning for building conservation, attracting funding, and overseeing the work. But, by the sound of things, the hardest aspect of his job is convincing more local people to experience and use the building. “I think there is a strange thing here in Ludlow, where a portion of the community just sees St Laurence’s as a religious building and, therefore, if they are not religious they won’t engage. And that’s a real shame, because that’s not quite the point of the Church of England. The Church of England is like your village pub or your village post office – it is there to be used. Anyone has the right to use it. Everybody has a right to be baptised, to be married, to have their funeral taken there. And we’ve kind of lost that, particularly
in Ludlow, and I don’t know why that is.” Get beyond this dated notion that the church is just about God and Christianity, and you discover that it’s just as much about being a gallery space, a logical place for groups to gather on a regular basis, a place to host a fashion show ... and a quiet spot to work on your laptop – it’s equipped with free wi-fi, after all. It sounds more like a community space and you soon realise that is exactly what St Laurence’s is: a place to sit, grab a coffee, read the paper – a place to get away from the elements. There are even toilets. What else do you need? “It’s no good keeping the building as it was in, say 1860, where people came on a Sunday, sat up straight and faced the front in ordered pews. That was basically about controlling the mob. And that was fine. But that doesn’t work now. It’s all about finding a different flow.”
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Shaun’s first real experience of church was aged six, when his mum took him to a carol service. “I remember it vividly: I saw the choir and went immediately up to the priest after the service and said: ‘I want to join the choir.’ And I never looked back.” Shaun sang in the choir, taking part in the five-aday wedding services of that time, and then went on to play the organ, which he taught himself at first – sneaking on to the organ (at 9 years old) when the organist popped out for half-an-hour between services. “One day he caught me, and said: ‘Right, you need lessons. ’ So I had a year with him and then he said: ‘you’re too good, you need a better teacher.’ That’s when I went to Bristol cathedral for lessons, and then I went on to university and studied the whole thing for five years.”
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