Short History

Stephen Foulkes was born and educated in Bristol, and was taken by his parents to join his first choir at the age of six, in the local church of St Andrew's Montpelier. He later joined the Somerset Constabulary as a police cadet, and saw service in Taunton and Weston-super-Mare. After joining the Regulars he was posted into the city of Bath, where he performed beat and Panda car patrol duties. At this time he volunteered to join the Force's Underwater Search Unit, and became a police frogman for eight years, recovering bodies, stolen property, weapons and even motor vehicles from the coasts, rivers and reservoirs of the Force area. He later moved to Weston-super-Mare as a traffic patrol officer, and policed the main roads and motorway system. When all the local Forces amalgamated, he achieved a long-standing ambition by joining the Mounted Section in Bristol. In doing so, he was required to give up his diving work, the reason being that the two specialist jobs could not be performed together. The reality was that his diving fins wouldn't fit through the stirrups....

While with the Mounted Section he was promoted to Sergeant, and he remained with the horses until his retirement in 1996. His interest in, and experience of, the group was put to good use two years later when he wrote a book about the history of Bristol's police horses which was published to mark the Unit's centenary in 1999.

It is a fact that in those days the shift work normally required of a police officer was perhaps less onerous on the Mounted Section, where an early or day turn was the usual pattern. This worked to his advantage when he was invited to join the Bristol Cathedral Choir by the then organist, Clifford Harker. He was able to accept the invitation, and remained a lay-clerk in the Cathedral for ten years. He subsequently joined the choir of St Mary Redcliffe ("the fairest, goodliest and most famous parish church in England" according to Queen Elizabeth I) and sang there with his two sons for eleven years. In 2002 he became a bass vicar-choral in Wells Cathedral Choir, a post he holds today. He lives in the medieval Vicars' Close and rejoices in the honorary title Pater Collegii (Father of the College), a title accorded to him by virtue of his years!