![](https://paulhale.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/n-2024404-New-College-cloisters-768x1024.jpg)
Yesterday was a special day for the musicians of New College Oxford; many of us attended a wonderful Memorial Evensong for Sir David Lumsden. The choir was on superb form, singing two works written for it – Harris’s ‘Faire is the Heaven’ and (for an introit) ‘Drop, drop, slow tears’ by Kenneth Leighton – the profoundly moving final movement of his ‘Crucifixus pro nobis’, commissioned by David Lumsden for N.C. choir in 1961.
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Earlier in the day David and Sheila’s ashes had been interred in the Cloisters, on the north side near the bell-tower. A finely incised memorial stone marks the spot, close to where N.C. alumnus James Bowman is also remembered.
![](https://paulhale.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/n-2024404-Lumsden-memorial-tablet.jpg)