WHEN the Friends of Winchester Cathedral celebrated their 90th anniversary with a special festival service on Saturday, one of their most senior members marked an astonishing milestone.

Lady Jane Portal, who’s 96, has been a member of the Cathedral Friends for nearly 80 of those 90 years, having joined in 1942.

Lady Portal’s connection with the Cathedral community over nine decades could hardly be stronger. When she was a teenager, her widowed mother had married the then Dean of Winchester, Gordon Selwyn, a widower himself, and she lived with them at The Deanery in the Cathedral Close. Her son, Sir Jonathan Portal, was a trustee of the Friends for many years; his wife, Lady Louisa Portal, is a member of the Cathedral council and their two sons were cathedral choristers.

For Jane Portal, memories of cathedral life in the war years are particularly vivid.

While living at The Deanery, Jane was given a cathedral fire-watching position, high up above the nave at the west end: “Whenever the air raid sirens went, which they frequently did because of attacks on Southampton, it nearly always started the fire alarms in Winchester. My mother made me what they called a ‘sirensuit’, something that you could get into very quickly and zip up in the middle of the night if you didn’t have very much on. After an alarm one night, I rushed up to the Cathedral belfry to access the passage above the nave and then felt my way in the dark along to the west end. I groped along the duck boards when, all of a sudden, my left hand went onto something warm and soft. It really gave me the jimjams but it was a pigeon, asleep. It was really one of the shocks of my life.”

Jane Portal also recalls being invited to Princess Elizabeth’s wedding at Westminster Abbey in 1947 - she thinks it was because her step-father, Dean Selwyn, was a good friend of the Dean of Westminster: “I clearly remember being shown to my seat right on the aisle by the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. And when the procession arrived, it slowed to trace its way around the tomb, giving me a brilliant view of each famous person in the procession.”

Although it was Dean Selwyn who had the idea to set up an Association of Friends, it was another leading member of Hampshire’s Portal family, Sir William Portal, who gave the main speech to a packed inaugural meeting in the Guildhall. He implored cathedral well-wishers to join the new association to provide much-needed financial support for the building, so earning the title ‘Co-founder of the Friends’ with Dean Selwyn.

Even The Times newspaper in London lent its support to the project by publishing a 700-word letter from the Dean calling for “a body of supporters who are prepared to take some share in caring for the cathedral and in handing it down to posterity with its beauties unimpaired and, if possible enriched”. It also printed a half-page picture of the cathedral taken from the tower of Winchester College by a staff photographer.

Since then, the Friends of the Cathedral have contributed, in today’s values, more than £12.5 million towards the fabric of the building and many other ancillary projects. Annual grants are made to support the choral foundation and the latest substantial funding was for the installation of video and sound equipment to live-stream services. The Duke of Edinburgh’s recent commemoration service was accessed by more than 100,000 viewers using the new facility.

On Saturday, several other nonagenarians will be in the congregation for the special festival service. It will also be attended by the Lord Lieutenant, Nigel Atkinson. The Chairman of the Friends, Bruce Parker, former BBC presenter and first host of the Antiques Roadshow, is a long-standing member: “I feel a bit of an antique myself as I’ve clocked up 50 years of Friends’ membership this year. I’m just proud to be associated with this fantastic place and its community.”

Canon Andy Trenier who’s in charge of music and the conduct of services in the cathedral says he’s been able to find out what was done on that historic day 90 years ago with the help of a contemporary article in the Hampshire Chronicle which recorded all the details.

“Of course, not everything will be the same. We will be including a ‘Thanksgiving Film’, made using the new camera equipment provided by the Friends. And the whole thing will be live streamed around the world - something that would have been unimaginable to the founders back in 1931.”

The Dean of Winchester, the Very Rev Catherine Ogle, as President of the Friends, will be delivering the sermon and, like her many predecessors, is fulsome in her praise of the organisation: “Over the past 90 years the Friends of Winchester Cathedral have been not just a source of faithful support, but also an on-going inspiration in their love and care for the cathedral.”

The director of the Cathedral Friends, Lucy Hutchin, was the recipient of a Mayor of Winchester award last year for her outstanding work in bringing hundreds of members together online for coffee mornings and lectures. “I know that many Friends really relied on these talks as something to keep them occupied and their minds active, especially in the dark days of the third lockdown in January”, she says proudly.

The Queen has been the royal patron of the Friends since her accession in 1953. In January this year, she sent a message to the Friends with “best wishes to you all for a most memorable anniversary”. The Friends also had the honour of commissioning a musical piece, “Queen Elizabeth’s Winchester Carol”, to celebrate Her Majesty’s own 90th birthday in 2016.