An old custom is to be revived in Leeds on June 24 when public representatives will walk in procession – weather permitting – from the Civic Hall to the Parish Church for a Festival Sunday civic service.
The procession will leave the Civic Hall, where members of the Council and respresentatives of the University will robe, just before 10 a.m., and walk to the church via Calverley Street, The Headrow, Park Row, Bond Street, Commercial Street and Kirkgate. If it rains, motor buses will be used.
The Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the Leeds Parish Church organist, Dr. Melville Cook, at the invitation of Mr. Maurice Miles, will take part in the service. The music will include the Nimrod variation from Elgar’s Enigma Variations, Stanford’s “Te Deum and Jubilate” in B flat, the hymn “All People That on Earth do Dwell,” Parry’s “I Was Glad,” Croft’s “O Worship the King,” Vaughan Williams’s “For all the Saints” and Walford Davies’s arrangement of the National Anthem.
The Vicar of Leeds (Canon A. S. Reeve) will give the address. Tickets will not be required and the service will start at 10.30 a.m.
A highlight of the Leeds Festival, in the field of drama, will be a production of Christopher Fry’s “A Sleep of Prisoners,” to be given at St. George’s Church from July 2 to July 7 with matinees on the Wednesday and Saturday and a special performance for organised parties from schools on the Friday afternoon.
Admission prices for the play will be 5s., 4s. and 2s., with a few unbookable seats, from which a view of the actors is not guranteed, at 1s. 6d.
The play attracted widespread attention when it was first given in a London church recently and the same cast is to perform it in Leeds. St. George’s Church, in Great George Street, has been chosen by the Leeds Anglican Churches as the one most suitable in the city for this play, which was writen for the Religious Drama Society for production in church. A box office is to be opened on Monday in St. George’s Crypt.
Yorkshire Post