Numbers of gentlemen of the choir

Less than two weeks after the first service, a press report stated that ‘a Choir has already begun its formation at the Castle Chapel under Mr. Barton’. John Barton, who would be a member of the choir for over thirty years, was evidently one of the founding singers, although this suggestion that he was master of the choir is not substantiated by any other evidence. There is no surviving official documentation of the choir in the first years, but an official of the Irish Public Records Office claimed in 1905 to have found ‘a warrant establishing a staff of laymen for the chapel’ from 1816. Since the majority of the lay staff of the Chapel (as per the annual parliamentary estimates, from 1831 onwards) were musicians, it seems very likely that this document was the first official authorization for the payment of singers for the Chapel. No evidence of this document survives, which would suggest that it perished in the explosion that destroyed the Irish Public Records Office in 1922.

A list of the members of the staff of the Chapel from 1823 includes the names of the organist James Duncan, and three gentlemen of the choir: John Barton, Charles Mills and George Mills. These names (‘Mr G. Mills’, ‘Mr C. Mills’ and ‘Mr Barton’) are also to be found neatly pencilled above hooks in one of the former robes cupboards in the Chapel, alongside the name ‘Gaudry’. The coincidence of these names suggests that the three men listed in 1823 had been members of the choir since Richard Gaudry's time as a chorister (between c. 1815 and 1817). John Barton, as we have seen, was a member of the choir from the beginning of 1815, and George Mills seems to have been a member of the choir from 1819 or earlier.

It would appear therefore that for around the first decade of the choir's existence, there was only one man to each of the lower parts – George Mills (alto), John Barton (tenor), and Charles Mills (bass) – although, as we shall see, it is possible that there were other unpaid voluntary singers also whose names have not been recorded. George Mills was replaced by William Henry Hamerton early in 1824.