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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Harriet Sherwood

Celebration or desecration? England’s cathedrals open doors to silent discos

View from behind DJs of a silent disco in Canterbury Cathedral this month.
Partygoers at a silent disco in Canterbury Cathedral this month. At Canterbury, the running costs are £7.3m a year, or £20,000 a day. Photograph: Chapter of Canterbury Cathedral

It was a night of old favourites and modern anthems. More than 400 people paid about £25 a head to dance beneath Winchester Cathedral’s magnificent medieval arches on Saturday evening. Drinks were served at a bar; music was fed through individual headphones.

“If you had told me this time last year that I would be in the cathedral, with a beer in my hand while belting out the chorus of Rolling in the Deep by Adele, then I would have thought you were mad,” wrote Matt Rooks-Taylor, a local reporter. “Everywhere I looked, there were happy faces.”

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