Event Start Date: 09 December 2022

Location: Temple Church

We have reached capacity for this event therefore bookings have now closed. Please email alumnievents@some.ox.ac.uk if you would like to be put on a waiting list

We are delighted to announce that the Somerville choir will be performing a Carol Concert at Temple Church on Friday 9 December at 7.00pm, entry from 6.30pm. The concert will run from 7 to 8, with a drinks reception until 8:30. 

The event is open to Somervillians, their friends and families.  There will be a charge of £10 per head, children under 18 free; or £20 per head to include a copy of the Somerville Choir’s new CD at a discounted price.

For directions and parking please see the Temple Church website

You can click here to watch the album trailer. 
You can listen to the album here.
You can purchase the CD here.

*The Temple and its Church occupy a semi-hidden world between the between the bustle of Fleet St and the Embankment.  Founded in the late 12th century by the Knights Templar, the Church is one of the finest examples of Gothic Romanesque.  The original round church contains within it a circle of the earliest known free standing Purbeck marble columns and nine haunting stone effigies of Knights Templar. 

The Order, a revolutionary combination of religious and military orders, named after its Jerusalem headquarters, the Temple of Solomon, became one of the most powerful institutions of the crusading period, its knights fighting in a more disciplined fashion and wearing the red cross of martyrdom. 

At the same time the Order evolved the first international banking system.   Military failure in the Holy Land made the Order vulnerable to suppression in the early fourteenth century and since then the Templars have been the stuff of myth and legend.  The Temple’s association with legal history has always been strong; the church was a venue for drafting Magna Carta and the American constitution and became the centre of legal London by the 16th century.

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