Chapter Seven: Tokenham Collegiate church
In the early years of the twenty-first century, while Luke and his sister Cathy were still at school, on one summer holiday visiting Jon's developing woodlands, they found near the forest in Shropshire that Jon and Arthur Rockwell and Robin Banks had planted fifteen or so years before, the small hamlet of Tokeham. Near that small place of three houses stood the Collegiate Church of Saint Andrew. Adjoining the church, which was well outside the hamlet, were four ancient houses surrounding a courtyard. The small, early fifteenth-century church, which would hold perhaps a maximum of fifty people, was in a bad state of repair. Inside there were dilapidated box pews and walls disfigured by crude yellow eighteenth century plasterwork. Admittedly, the roof was watertight and the church had an organ, in a playable condition, but no organist.
Enquiry revealed that the houses were the residences of a Dean and three canons, and that the church was a royal peculiar. Further enquiry however, revealed that the Crown only controlled, via the Lord Chancellor's office the appointment of the canons and the maintenance of their houses via the Crown estates. There was no support or endowment for the maintenance of the church, not even the chancel, because it was not, and never had been, a parish church. In the past, the canons had usually been wealthy men, who had maintained the church at their own expense, but a resident canonry of Tokeham was now used as a sort of retirement home, where elderly clergy without much money could end their days peacefully. On average, one canon died each year. They took it in turns to say the daily office in the church, and on Sundays there was a congregation of about half a dozen souls, none of whom lived locally. Most of the canons were scholars, and occupied themselves with reading and writing.
David was excited by the discovery. "There'll never be a resident congregation, but if money were spent on it, the church could be made really beautiful. The chancel has seats for 20 canons, although there has never been more than three plus the dean since the Reformation. But we could use the church as the seat of a new choir singing church music, if only we could get about a dozen volunteers with the right mix of voices."
Several years after this, when he had finally found time, David set about realizing this aspiration. He resolved to trace the Dean, and see if he was interested. He found the Dean of Tokeham via his godfather, Professor Edward Bairstow, who knew him. The dean was an elderly but very lively man and gave David a free hand to try and recruit a choir. David also said that he would try and find resources to fund a restoration of the church building. He contacted the director of music at Worcester Cathedral, who had been Organ Scholar when he had been in the Boni's Chapel choir. He asked him if he knew any amateur, part-time singers who might be interested in joining a new amateur choir, specializing in church music. They would need to live within sixty kilometres of Tokeham, but the church was not at present a suitable place for regular choir practices, so they would need to find a place in the nearest town, which was Worcester.
It took a couple of years to find the necessary people for a viable choir. There was the usual shortage of tenors and altos, but David persevered with the search, because he missed communal singing. Finally he was in a position, about the time that Sandro was moving into college, to call an initial meeting of all interested participants, which was fixed for a date at the end of October in Worcester. He decided to ask Marcello Fabioni, who though now very old, was still active, if he knew a professional musician who might like to take the unpaid job of choir director, without of course giving up his day job. Although David himself would have liked to do the job, his frequent absences abroad made it impossible.
Marcello suggested a man called Denis Hutchinson, who worked for the BBC. Not knowing him personally, David sent him an E-mail outlining his ideas and asking whether working on such a project was of any interest to him. Hutchison replied enthusiastically, and invited David to visit him at Broadcasting House in London. David explained that the project was two-fold: the renovation and revival of a historic building, and setting it to new use by an amateur choir with the highest international musical standards. Obviously in the early stages until the restoration of the church was complete, the choir would have to rehearse and perform elsewhere, but within five years, it should be possible to complete the project and add a new artistic landmark to the English musical scene.
The meeting took place, with David in the chair and Denis Hutchinson present to answer questions, and it was agreed that the first work to be performed would be at Christmas of the following year, and would be a Schubert mass. Shortly after the meeting, David was able to inform the choir members by letter that funding had been found to restore the church.
Chapter Eight: Jon's money
Jonathan was reviewing his financial situation. The property empire that he had inherited from his father had vastly increased under Tim Ingledown's expert trusteeship, and was now getting on in value towards several hundreds of millions. From the income that this brought in, Jon took about 25%, much of which was spent on maintenance of his and David's personal properties: the flat in Fountain Street, Rockwell's Barn, the flat in London and the houses in Heemstede, Madeira and Montecatini Terme, though he did pay a small allowance to Luke which was only double what he had paid him as a student. Another 40% went in tax. Ten percent went into a fund to support Cathy, and a further 10% went into a new trust fund for Luke and Tom, which paid Luke a direct income of £10K per annum. Tom had elected not to draw a share of the income for the moment, he had a perfectly adequate income of his own. The rest of the income was invested in bonds and shares for the acquisition of more land and property when the opportunity arose. Tim had advised him that a financial crisis was approaching, and it would be better to realize some of this money and give it away, rather than let it disappear in a slump.
Jon decided that his two pet trusts, the Afforestation Trust and the Drystone Walling Trust should have £2M each, and that Buckingham College, Saint Boniface's College and the Edmund Heptinstall Educational Trust should all have £10M each. The Camford Men's Fitness Centre would get the last few thousand of its debt for the new extension paid off. The Collegiate Church of Saint Andrew, Tokeham was to receive £1M. He got Tim to make sure that he was not identified as the donor (the funds belonged to a Trust of which he and Tim were the sole trustees).
Jon cared little for politics, but Tim had advised him that the higher education system was going to undergo even greater "dumbing down" in the future years and that all the best institutions would undergo pressures to lower their standards. To protect the elite institutions would require a massive input of private donations to ensure their freedom from financial dependence on the state, and so he picked out the two Camford institutions that had served his family best, Boni's, his employer, and Buckingham, where Luke and Tom had been taught. The Trust would signal to both colleges that a proportion of the gift should be spent on their respective fund-raising activities, and that 20% should be put into their endowments, not spent immediately. The rest could be employed for any purposes for building improvement and academic development that the Governing Body chose.
The donation to the Heptinstall Trust was to ensure that the best and most brilliant students, irrespective of family background, should continue to receive a totally free education, by making scholarships available not just to those beginning their studies, but to those who gave the most spectacular results in their first year exams. Fifty percent of the awards should be set aside for the latter category, who would be nominated by their college or university department. No formal means test of parental income would be applied, the Trust would expect the nominating college or department to be aware of the candidates' financial circumstances. The number of such students was obviously going to be limited by the cash available, and this should act as a motivating factor to stimulate hard academic work rather than laziness. Already, after a mere three years, Heptinstall Scholarships, thanks to the hard work of Tom's former teacher, Bernard Silverdale, had become glittering academic prizes that Jon and Tim hoped would reinvigorate British higher education at an individual level. The Trust had established an active fundraising programme, and already the number of scholarships available each year had doubled. A lot of wealthy people were happy to think that they were actively helping impoverished young men and women to do well academically.
The donation to St Andrew's, Tokeham was to remove the eighteenth century plaster, make necessary external repairs, renovate and clean the interior and reorder the furnishings to suit choir concerts, including the installation of toilet facilities, all of course subject to the necessary legal faculties.
All this had to be kept secret, because Jon did not want to become a figure mentioned in the media, of which he had a venomous loathing and distrust. So not even the heads of the two beneficiary colleges knew the identity of the man behind the Trust's donation. Jon had previously made regular donations to his college since he became of age, and this fact was of course known to the President of Boni's, and was the reason for Jon's Honorary Fellowship. The fact that he had been a much appreciated tutor to Boni's first year chemistry students, did not seem to figure much in the equation.
Chapter Nine: Ben comes to dinner
