George was born in the English market town of Boston Lincolnshire – the original Boston, a settlement dating from medieval times which straddles the River Witham as it flows into the North Sea, on the east coast of England.
The town has an important history. According to the scholar Reverend Mark Spurrell in his publication “Boston Parish Church, St. Botolph’s”:
“… Boston {once} possessed a port that was doing more business than any other in England, except London; there were a few years at the end of the thirteenth century when more business was done in Boston. Wool from the backs of three million sheep was exported annually, and it was the finest wool that Europe produced. Merchants from all over Europe came to Boston for the ‘great fair’ … when they bought wool and cloth and sold their wines and their furs.”
Of interest is the fact that in the 17th century, local Puritans fleeing religious persecution set sail for New England, to establish the Massachusetts Bay Colony which they named “Boston” in recognition of the home town they had left behind.
The landscape of Boston was, and still is, dominated by its strikingly beautiful parish church St. Botolph’s (affectionately called “The Stump”).
Boston, an attractive, rather tranquil old town, far removed from the sparkling, pulsing liveliness of a big city like London many miles to the south.
St. Botolph’s Church, “The Stump”, an edifice of immense repose commanding the landscape, its tower reaching to the sky. It can be seen for miles in the surrounding prairie.
It was here that George grew up, studied piano and organ, and found out he was a musician.
“I didn’t DECIDE to be a musician … it was never a thought” he once commented.
After studies at the Royal College of Music, he received his Fellowship of the Royal College of Organists in 1937 before his 20th birthday and his DMus from Oxford in 1943, at age 25 being one of the youngest ever to do so.
