Jo Tiddy, Wycombe District Council’s Heritage Officer, was responsible for the organisation of the ceremony.  After the unveiling, the new owners of the house hosted a reception, during which Alexander Duval (baritone) sang Down by the Salley Gardens, Epitaph, andSevern Meadows.  Alexander was accompanied by Stephen Armstrong, Director of the local choral society and prime mover of the idea to have Gurney publicly remembered.  The songs were followed by piano music played by Warren Mailley-Smith.
  

Ivor Gurney was 24 years old when he arrived in High Wycombe to take the post of organist at Christ Church, Credon Street.  After military service, he returned to that post from 1919 to 1920.  His years at High Wycombe were some of his most fertile.  He worked on a violin sonata, a symphony, a War Elegy, a string quartet, and some of his best songs: The Singer, Desire in Spring, Down by the Salley Gardens, and several settings of John Masefield. 

It was at St. Michael’s, a house on Castle Hill (now The Greenway), and home of the Chapmans and their four children (Kitty, Winnie, Marjorie ‘Micky’, and Arthur), where Gurney lived on weekends in 1914-1915, joining them for meals, laughter, music, pipe-smoking and fireside chat, plus wild games of cricket or ‘ping-pong’ (table tennis).  The riotous times they shared are recounted in Anthony Boden’s Stars in a Dark Night (Alan Sutton, publisher).  In a letter to Winnie, Gurney exclaims:

“What must High Wycombe hills look like now!  Great clouds of miraculous green, green that looks alive and gifted with a voice.”   
. . . . and . . . .

“It is a delectable land all this, with changing soils in the valley and a happy air of peace over all.”