Leominster Priory celebrates 900th anniversary with festival

Florence Lockheart
Thursday, May 29, 2025

The Priory 900 festival will present concerts, workshops, bell-ringing and special church services as well as heritage walks and talks, art installations, craft workshops, dramas and exhibitions

Leominster Priory director of music and priory 900 co-ordinator Hilary Norris (right) with the Priory Arts team outside the Norman west door of the Priory (Image courtesy of Priory Arts)
Leominster Priory director of music and priory 900 co-ordinator Hilary Norris (right) with the Priory Arts team outside the Norman west door of the Priory (Image courtesy of Priory Arts)

The Herefordshire market town of Leominster will fill with music next month as Leominster Priory celebrates its 900th anniversary with a month-long multi-arts festival. The Priory 900 festival will present concerts, workshops, bell-ringing and special church services as well as heritage walks and talks, art installations, craft workshops, dramas and free exhibitions from 14 June to 14 July.

The musical programme will kick off on 15 June with a choral programme bringing together music from Herefordshire, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, with works by Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Holst, Parry and Wesley performed by Leominster Choral Society, conducted by James Atherton and accompanied on the Priory’s recently restored Nicholson pipe organ by the Priory’s director of music, Hilary Norris.

This is followed by 900 Years of Leominster and its Priory, which sees Pazzamezzo Early Dance, Leominster Morris, Priory Choir and Leominster History Society come together to tell the story of the priory through dance, story and music and Rhymes and Chimes, a collaboration between poet Catherine Swire, artist Jackie Morris and the Leominster Priory Bellringers, exploring links between bell-ringing and weaving through poetry, sound and sculpture.

On 29 June a cappella vocal group Border Voices sings music from the reigns of Henry I to Henry VIII with Bagpipes, shawms, viols, fiddels and more recreating the musical sounds of the Priory’s past. Organist Hilary Norris returns to the festival on 4 July for French Connections, demonstrating the continuing influence of our neighbours across the channel on English music, including works by Purcell, Vaughan Williams, Elgar and Widor with English Symphony Orchestra principal trumpet Stuart Essenhigh.

A festival service will take place on the morning of 19 June, with music led by the Priory Choir, directed by Norris, before a candlelit evening service of Compline with plainsong on 6 July. Local singers keen to get involved are invited to take part in an afternoon workshop on the day to prepare the music, then join the Priory Choir for the service. The festival will conclude with 900 Years and Beyond, an play and church service involving song, dance and drama performed by community groups, bringing key moments of the town and Priory’s history to life.