O dearest Lord, thy sacred head

Tune by Vincent Novello.

Vincent Novello (61781 – 1861), English musician, son of an Italian who married an English wife, was born in London.

As a boy, Novello was a chorister at the Sardinian Embassy Chapel in Duke Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, where he learnt the organ from Samuel Webbe; and from 1796 to 1822 he became in succession organist of the Sardinian, Spanish (in Manchester Square) and Portuguese (in South Street, Grosvenor Square) chapels, and from 1840-43 of St Mary Moorfields.


Text by Henry Ernest Hardy

Hardy (later known as Father Andrew) (1869 – 1946) was a British Anglican clergyman and friar, who co-founded the Society of Divine Compassion to work with the poor in the East End of London.

He was highly regarded as a confessor, spiritual guide and religious writer. (A bishop described him as a great man, such as God sends only once or twice in a generation.) He was also a talented painter. His health, which had troubled him for many years, worsened as a result of the strain imposed by the Second World War, which hit the East End severely – the church was bombed twice. He developed cancer, and died on 31 March 1946.