Songsters bid an emotional farewell after 34 years of making music together at an end-of-an-era concert in Wolverhampton.

They held weekly rehearsals around a kitchen table and sang at each other’s weddings but on Saturday the Wulfrun Consort of Voices gave their final performance.

Some former members travelled hundreds of miles to take part in the farewell event at St Columba’s Church in Finchfield before the group’s founders Sheila and Philip Bradfield move to Scotland.

Among them were Mary Gibson, who used to live off Oxbarn Avenue in Merry Hill, and travelled from her home in Northumberland to take part in the concert. She sang in the choir from the late 1970s to 1987.

“We’ve performed at some wonderful venues, including Christ Church at Oxford University,” she said.

“The Christmas events at Moseley Old Hall, when we dressed in Tudor costumes and sang by candlelight, were very atmospheric. Being in the choir brought me new friends and re-awakened my interest in madrigals and early English music.”

Pharmacist David Evans, aged 57, and wife Jenny, 61, who met through the choir, made a 360-mile round trip from Ipswich to take part in the show.

David said: “The choir has always been enormous fun and we all usually ended up in the pub after a show or rehearsal.

“We joined in its early days when most of the members were students so it’s always been a very sociable group.” Alto Jenny added: “We both come from musical families so singing is as natural to us as breathing. It’s been lovely coming back and seeing everyone.”

The concert, called The Last Of Summer’s Wine, included a range of musical offerings from the madrigal O Primavera by Monteverdi to the negro spiritual Deep River to the jaunty I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside.

Current choir member Val Sumner, 63, who lives in Penn, said: “It’s very sad, the end of an era. When you have such a small group of singers, the atmosphere is very relaxed and we’ve made so many friends through the choir.”

Winning the choral class cup in the last Wolverhampton Music Festival was one of the highlights of Philip Bradfield’s time with the consort.

He added: “You never really know what you’re going to get before a performance, and sometimes it’s been magical.”