St Mary's, Lancaster

St Mary’s in Lancaster is better known as the Priory, a courtesy name it adopted between the wars, which harked back to its pre-reformation existence. The city’s main parish church, it was rejected as a possibility for the new Lancashire diocese which went to Blackburn in 1926 on account of its hilltop site and difficulty of expansion. As well as having forbears interred in its shadow, it is a place I know well. My school would have termly services here and it is somewhere I used to volunteer, cleaning the brasses and offering tours to Japanese visitors when I was a teenager. Sadly, it employed several questionable characters since that period, both morally and theologically, though the building remains wonderfully interesting.

Arguably, its chief treasure is a set of fifteenth-century choirstalls, intricately carved and regularly used. They include misericords, which means that the seat is hinged so it may be raised or lowered, always giving the chorister the appearance of standing. Medieval folk loved to place carvings on the underside of the seats, sometimes of a humorous or irreverent nature. I have previously commented on examples at Whalley, while Lancaster’s live up to expectations and appear to include a winged cherub caught in a moment of indiscretion, doubtless amusing silly boys for centuries.

Choir stalls are the place from which trained singers are meant to lead worship; intricate furnishings and impertinent jokes prove a hindrance in this regard, and should be avoided if worship is sincere and genuine and not just a round of formality and civic pomp. The ancient Israelites had Levitical singers and heaven itself seems to have its share of angelic choirs. A small chapel like ours may not be able to sustain such a body for a number of reasons, but we can all sing our best, not obsessing over the sounds (bitter or sweet), but the Beautiful One to whom we address our lyrics.

O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness: fear before him, all the earth. Psalm 96:9

And David spake to the chief of the Levites to appoint their brethren to be the singers with instruments of musick, psalteries and harps and cymbals, sounding, by lifting up the voice with joy. 1 Chronicles 15:16

A  D