Bath
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Josie Steps Down
50 years at the Organ at St Alphege
Josie was born in Ramsgate, Kent, in the 1930s and much of her childhood was spent dodging the bombs and shells that fell on that corner of England during the war. Josie's mum was a Bathonian so she took Josie back to Gran's house in Bath to escape the bombing. As they were leaving Ramsgate the survivors from Dunkirk were arriving. She remembers the train loads of hungry and exhausted soldiers in trucks, their clothes in tatters. People were throwing them packets of sandwiches. Her dad was a policeman, so he stayed on for a while. They arrived in time for the Bath Blitz. Josie was sent to a convent school in Sion Hill. She remembers looking across the city one night and seeing it in flames. "That's my pens and pencils burning," she thought. Fortunately the nuns at the convent lived elsewhere. Later Josie and her family were blitzed out themselves.
When things calmed down they returned to Ramsgate. She had lost much of her schooling so her mum decided she should start work at 14 as an apprentice hairstylist. She took up the piano and played for concert parties and drama groups, for which she also prepared the wigs. "My teenage years were very happy. I had a great group of friends and we would go swimming and cycling along the coast."
When Josie was 25 her dad retired and he decided the family should move to Bath because he liked the life there - in contrast to her mum who didn't want to go back! So the family moved to Bloomfield in Bath and attended St Alphege's. Just after they arrived the priest, Father James Kelly, called on them and saw Josie's piano. "Do you play?" he asked her. "Yes," she replied, and told him how she had played for concert parties in Ramsgate. "We've got a concert at St Alphege's and th pianist can't come", he said. "Would you play for us?". So that's how Josie started playing at St Alphege. Afterwards Father Kelly arranged for her to have lessons at the organ, and gradually she took greater parts in the many sevices at the church.
The organ at the church then was a tracker organ at the back of the church, a tall pipe organ with mechanical linkages which put a strain on the hands and feet. The parish was finally completing the building programme which had started in 1929, and in 1960 the west gallery was finished allowing a proper organ to be installed. Somebody gave £4000 (the price of a good house) and the fine organ which had been built as a demonstrator by Rushmore and Draper was acquired. In due course Josie became principal organist and choir mistress.
Josie also played at St Joseph's, which at the time was only a wooden hut erected by the men of the parish, and she taught the large group of children in the Sunday School there. As principal organist she built up a competent group of choristers, and they performed many well-known works. One year the BBC came for a live service and brought all their vans and equipment. Josie had to play very quietly while the well-known broadcaster Dom Agnellus Andrews spoke. She said it was all quite traumatic and the priest said "Never again"!
When she had first returned to Bath she started as a hair stylist at Hatt & Co in The Corridor, the very up-market ladies hairdressers and perfumers. She had been unhappy at leaving all her friends in Ramsgate but she found that the girls at Hatt's were a happy lot too, and they became great friends. Hatt's sent her up to Bond Street in London to learn from the top professionals. She stayed at Hatt's for 30 years.
With Father Richard
Now with arthritis and rheumatism taking their toll, Josie has decided to step down from regular playing, although she intends to help out when required. At Mass on October 12th she played as principal organist for the last time. Afterwards the parishioners gathered in the hall to celebrate her long years at the organ - many of them had not been born when she first played at St Alphege's! Father Richard thanked her for years of faithful service and presented her with a copy of the book A Glimpse of Heaven, which not only features St Alphege but also the church in Ramsgate at which she had been baptised! Then the parishioners cut the cut they had specially prepared for her. The words in icing on the top said it all, "Thank You for the Music".
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