Community Christmas Tea Party

11th December 2019

Every year, Winchester College hosts a festive tea party, with carols, readings and music, for elderly people in the local community. This year, on 4 December 2019, 100 guests attended from ten local nursing homes – St Catherine’s, Moorside, Brendon care Meadway, Brendon care Park Road, St Cross Grange, Brothers at St Cross Hospital, Abbotts Barton Nursing Home, Sunrise Nursing Home, Abbeyfield Nursing Home, Westholme Nursing Home. The school has long-standing relationships with all the care homes, regularly visiting them throughout the year for conversation and to put on musical performances. 

On the day, guests were treated to smoked salmon sandwiches, sausage rolls, sausages, chocolate brownies, Christmas cake and mince pies. There was music from the Quiristers, Cantores Episcopi, the CS Entertainers and the Jazz band. There were also a number of beautiful readings from senior boys, with extracts from David Niven’s “The Moon is a Balloon” and also Evelyn Waugh’s “Decline and Fall”. One boy also read a letter from Evelyn to his wife Laura describing a catastrophic effort by 42 Commando to impress a local nobleman by blowing up a tree stump.

Working in partnership with Hampshire Hospital Foundation Trust, Winchester College pupils also regularly visit hospital patients to sing and play music. On 11 December, two groups of musicians from the school visited the RHCH for special festive jazz performances and to sing carols in a number of the long-term care wards.

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