Commonweal School singers' surprise as video goes viral

The video, uploaded on the Commonweal School page, shows five Year 11 students singing ‘I Can Hear The Bells’ from the musical Hairspray during a visit to Quarry Mount care home on Thursday.

The clip is only 54 seconds long and was filmed on a mobile phone but it has been a surprise hit.

Ali Sutcliffe, Head of Performing Arts at Commonweal, said: “We took the Chamber Choir, which is a small group of a dozen singers, to perform at Quarry Mount.

“We go round a lot of care homes at Christmas but they had asked if we could come back in the spring.

“I took a few snaps and a video for the Facebook page as I usually do and didn’t think anything of it.

“When I got to school this morning, the person who does our social media told me how many people had viewed it, I was stunned.”

Since being uploaded at 4pm on Thursday, the video has been viewed over 33,000 times with Facebook saying it has now reached 332,580 people.

Ali added: “I just thought wow – I went to see the girls and they were ecstatic.”

The group in the video include Charlotte Delfino, Holly Snowdon, Emma Skane-Lawrence, Eve Batten and Emma Booth.

All five study GCSE music and perform in the choir.

Emma Skane-Lawrence said: “It’s a bit crazy, it’s only a small video so we really weren’t expecting it.

“It’s the first time we have sung that song – it’s normally a solo but we thought we could do our own version so we put a little arrangement together.”

Fellow performer Eve added: “We’re just a group of five friends who thought we could do something different with the song.

“When my friend sent me a picture showing me how many people had watched it I just couldn’t believe it.”

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Charlotte Delfino, Holly Snowdon, Emma Skane-Lawrence, Eve Batten and Emma Booth