There has probably been a Church choir in Crediton for something over 1,250 years. The choirs of the Saxon monastery and cathedral and of the early Collegiate Church however sang only plainsong (Gregorian chant).
The Collegiate Church was under construction on its present site not long after the departure of the Cathedra to Exeter in 1050 and its early choir consisted of the eighteen Vicars Choral of the Church, who were for the most part ordained and also preached in the Churches of the surrounding parishes.
By the middle of the thirteenth century, the Vicars Choral had been reduced to twelve in number – one for each canon of the Church, but the music they sang was still no more adventurous than plainsong. Bishop John de Grandisson, appointed Bishop of Exeter in 1327, was an enthusiastic advocate of the use of polyphonic music, music with melody. In 1334 he expanded Crediton’s choir by the addition of four secondary clerks (young men with adult voices) and four singing boys. Little of the music which they produced would have been for the enhancement of the worship of the Parish Church, then confined to the nave of the building, but was for the Glory of God and the benefit of the senior clergy. The pattern of worship in the Collegiate Church probably followed closely that observed in Exeter Cathedral, and the music, too, would have been very similar; the choir would have been capable of tackling polyphonic music in several parts and in structure was identical to that of the bishop’s own foundation at Ottery St Mary. All members of the choir were expected to attend the whole round of daily services (whether choral or not), from “morrow mass” of the wee small hours through to Mattins at around midnight.
With Grandisson’s measures of 1334, membership of the choir effectively had three levels: the Vicars Choral, the secondary clerks and the choristers. From 1365 the vicars and the clerks were housed in a sort of hostel called Kalenderhey, which was built to the north of the Church (on the western side of the present car park) and which was only fully demolished in the middle of the nineteenth century.