Worship at the Abbey

A Service to Commemorate the Life of Florence Nightingale

14 May 2008 at 12:00 am

Nurses packed the Abbey for the annual commemoration of the life of Florence Nightingale.

The service, led by the Dean, the Very Reverend Dr John Hall, featured the procession of the lamp carried by Florence Nightingale Scholar, Comfort Momoh MBE (right), from St Thomas’s Hospital.

The lamp is usually kept in the Nurses’ Chapel in the North Ambulatory along with the Nurses’ Roll of Honour which was carried through the Abbey by Corporal Kirsty Whitelock of Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps.

Readings at the service were given by David Hart, chairman of Nurse Aid, and by Professor Shona Brown, a trustee of the Florence Nightingale Foundation.

The address was given by the Reverend Dominic Fenton, lead chaplain at the North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust and Priest Vicar of the Abbey.

The Abbey’s special service choir, conducted by the Organist and Master of Choristers James O’Donnell, sang John Tavener’s Hymn to the Mother of God and John Rutter’s Pie Jesu.

The organ was played by Assistant Organist James McVinnie