A moment spent alone

Apr 07, 2020, 02:09 PM

Oxford lockdown sound recorded by Cities and Memory.

"Each day in the UK, we're currently allowed one form of exercise - in my case, I've taken to cycling, choosing my routes by picking out a church somewhere in the city as a destination and cycling to it. 

"Today I explored St. Margaret's Church in Binsey, which is home to the "Alice Well", which inspired Lewis Carroll when writing Alice in Wonderland and takes a fantastical form in the book.

"Inside the deserted church, there's an old pump organ with a polite notice inviting people to play it (and treat it with care of course!). In this recording you can hear me enter the church and play some droning chords with the stops pulled out, the sound completely filling the tiny church and bringing me a moment of really lovely peace. You can also make out the sounds of birdsong from the churchyard and the much fainter but still present sound of traffic on the nearby ring road, a reminder that life is, in fact, still going on." 


Part of the #StayHomeSounds project, documenting the sounds of the global coronavirus lockdown around the world - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/covid19-sounds