Visit to St Mary's, Fairford. Magnificent medieval windows and audio guide.

The first of this summers St John's volunteer outings to get inspiration for the development of interpretative materials at St John's was to St Mary's church, Fairford. The church boasts  the only complete set of late medieval glass in a parish church in the country. It's opened daily by volunteers, runs scheduled guided tours and has a fantastic, celebrity delivered, audio guide which we were keen to check out. 

Delia, Elizabeth and Ed set off on a glorious summers morning for the hour long drive to this church on the Gloucestershire / Wiltshire border. Volunteer guide Geoff Hawkins met us at the church and explained a bit about the history of the church and the development of the audio guide. 
The guide grew very organically - the script was written by the chairman of the friends, who just happened to have excellent contacts in the theater industry and was able to call in some favours from celebrities to deliver the script. 
Each of the 30 odd windows has it's own short section in the guide which can be skipped to on the handset and there are several discreet themes, such as the wool trade, pentecost, and of course a general history of the church and the conservation of the windows. 

The friends paid for the entire development of the audio guide and purchased the hand held players with no support from external funders. A true voluntary enterprise! 
They were initially worried that theft of the handsets might be an issue but it hasn't been. Only once or twice have people wandered off inadvertedly with them, and have hastily brought them back. 

Geoff was unable to say if it had increased the average donation from visitors (they don't charge for the guide) but he did say he thought it had been successful and people stayed longer in the church because of it. 
Elizabeth was particuarly taken by Tiddles, the church cat buried in the graveyard!

Delia was kind enough to provide some useful thoughts and feedback on the visit: 

Thanks for the trip yesterday… I really enjoyed the audio guide at the church. I  liked the way it was divided into general history and then specific exposition about the windows… the production values were very high with an excellent script and the use of so many well known, actors.

I can imagine that we could do something similar at St. Johns – some general history with perhaps ambient noises and maybe dramatized scenes – like royal visits, harbour-side life, merchants meetings/service in the crypt, liturgy in the medieval day, Markets and general life.

We might approach the Old Vic for help with this perhaps but would probably have to write the script first. We could also use ambient noise just as background – like playing renaissance and choral music in the upper church – rather than Victorian hymn singing…

Next team trip to Clevdon court on the 29th July!