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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Victorian church attendance
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
I don't know if this belongs here, but I'm not sure where else to put it.
I'm looking at two cousins who took over two adjoining farm tenancies in the 1830s. They attended their parish church, which was just over three miles away, including a small but steep hill. One cousin became an ordained elder in 1849, which suggests that they took their churchgoing seriously. During the twenty years from the early 1830s on, one cousin's wife had eight children, the other nine. The two families initially shared the rent of one pew, but as the families increased, they rented one each.
I'm trying to envisage this. On virtually any given Sunday, for twenty years, the combined family group would have included a woman at some stage of pregnancy, or recently delivered, a baby, a toddler or two, and young children. Walking must have been slow going. It must have taken an hour and a half at least to get to church, and the same back.
My question is this - did whole family groups go to church in rural areas, or was it normal for pregnant women, nursing mothers etc. to stay at home with the under-threes? In which case, were there women who were virtually never at church?
This is a Scottish example, but I assume the rural church / distance / large family issue was universal in the C19th.
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Zach82
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# 3208
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Posted
More people went to church more often back then, it is true, but just because the family rented a pew doesn't necessarily mean they were all filling the pew every Sunday. The congregation at a Victorian church would look sparse and evenly distributed through the nave, with the congregants near the pulpit and the stove looking better off than the people in the back.
Evensong was a much more important service back then. Father would take the children to church in the morning, while mother, or in wealthier houses the servants, prepared Sunday lunch. With the washing up done, everyone else would go to church to hear Evensong. It's a shame, really, that Evensong is dying out, because people don't necessarily have Sunday mornings off any more.
The distance thing would, naturally, have been more of a rural issue. But walking three miles would also have been a pretty commonplace occurrence too.
[ 12. November 2013, 14:51: Message edited by: Zach82 ]
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Don't give up yet, no, don't ever quit/ There's always a chance of a critical hit. Ghost Mice
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Baptist Trainfan
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# 15128
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
Father would take the children to church in the morning, while mother, or in wealthier houses the servants, prepared Sunday lunch. With the washing up done, everyone else would go to church to hear Evensong.
In our prosperous middle-class town-centre chapel, the Family would observe the Sabbath in the morning while the servants were forced to break it. In the evening the family would (I think) stay home while the servants were given the choice of using their "free" time attending worship or getting sacked. (By the way, they had to sit up in the Gallery, away from the "posh people").
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Adam.
Like as the
# 4991
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Posted
Would they necessarily have been walking? If they were managing farm tenancies, wouldn't they have access to some kind of horse-based transport?
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Ave Crux, Spes Unica!
Preaching blog
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Zach82
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# 3208
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Posted
Farmers didn't necessarily keep their own horses, especially tenants.
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Enoch
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# 14322
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Posted
It's possible that some people thought that it was enough to have rented a pew and paid the rent. Once one had done that, might it not have been showing signs of dangerous enthusiasm to feel that one was expected actually to go and sit in it?
It's also possible that tenant famers might have had a horse and some sort of trap/wagon as they might have needed it during the week.
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
Originally posted by Zach:
quote:
Evensong was a much more important service back then. Father would take the children to church in the morning, while mother, or in wealthier houses the servants, prepared Sunday lunch. With the washing up done, everyone else would go to church to hear Evensong.
For about four months of the year, I assume this wouldn't have been an option, as their route to church was mostly along unlit dirt road. It's growing dark here now at 4.30pm; I assume a family with children wouldn't have wanted to travel three miles home from church in the dark much later than this; nor would the mother want to travel this alone, or with the teenage servant girl. (Pure assumption - I don't know this, but it seems common sense)
quote:
The distance thing would, naturally, have been more of a rural issue. But walking three miles would also have been a pretty commonplace occurrence too.
Indeed; I have a reference to the unmarried adults walking 30 miles to attend a family wedding and 30 miles home a day later. But toddlers and under fives would always have slowed everything down.
Originally posted by Hart:
quote:
Would they necessarily have been walking? If they were managing farm tenancies, wouldn't they have access to some kind of horse-based transport?
They had horses for ploughing; like the modern Clydesdale horse, but with shorter legs. Immensely strong, but not good horses for transport! There's a reference to one of the two men getting a horse for attending market in the 1850s, and I'm deducing from that that they hadn't previously had a horse for transport.
[ 12. November 2013, 15:49: Message edited by: North East Quine ]
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american piskie
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# 593
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
I don't know if this belongs here, but I'm not sure where else to put it.
I'm looking at two cousins who took over two adjoining farm tenancies in the 1830s. They attended their parish church, which was just over three miles away, including a small but steep hill. ...[del]
Fascinating. I think it may be place-dependent. Are there any Session records or local sources that will, for a start, give an idea of the pattern of services? (We're clearly not in mattins and evensong land!) Was it not the case that Forenoon service, an hour's break and then Afternoon service was a typical rural diet of worship?
Perhaps one has to explore the reminiscence and fiction genres?
Annals of the Parish
Cornkister Days
Old Church Life in Scotland
AKH Boyd
(Love the Pictish beastie!)
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Zach82
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# 3208
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Posted
On a semi-tangent, the pew rental system is one of the reasons we have a surplus of churches today. It's not the only reason, that's for sure, but back in the day, a church was "full" when all the pews were rented out, not when it was packed to bursting for the main Sunday service.
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Don't give up yet, no, don't ever quit/ There's always a chance of a critical hit. Ghost Mice
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
Not the case in western Canada. Churches were built so that people could could reasonably get to them. Usually 15 miles apart. Pew fees and rentals were never part of it. At most, these churches are presently 100-150 years old, younger as move west, save the lower mainland of BC and Vancouver Island.
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
Thanks, american piskie. I walk past a Pictish beastie on my way to church every week, so the avatar seemed appropriate!
I've had one trawl through the Session records and got baptismal records, pew rentals, dates of admission to membership and the ordination of one of the two as an elder, but I didn't think to look for service times. Guess I'll have to go back for another look.
I've Cornkister Days and the sublime Johnny Gibb of Gushetneuk in the Parish o' Picktillum; I'll have to re-read, and look at your other suggestions.
Zach, to continue your tangent, Aberdeen has a surplus of churches, because every single minister left the established Church of Scotland in the Disruption of 1843, taking most of their congregations with them, and then built a new church. So by 1850 Aberdeen had twice the number of churches it needed! Many of which are now offices, housing or nightclubs.
The parish I'm talking about however didn't "come out" but remained established C of S. It's a glorious church, on one of the earliest sites of Christianity in Scotland, with medieval sections and lots of architectural features. It looks as thought it ought to have been posh, and indeed had some very wealthy attendees, but was also parish church to the rural tenant farmers from their thatched cottages.
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Chorister
Completely Frocked
# 473
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Posted
New mothers wouldn't have been expected to get there until after they had been 'churched' - which, as far as I can tell, was at least a month after childbirth (commonly 40 dyas). When you think of African women working in the fields with young babies tied onto their backs, maybe a 2 or 3 mile walk with a little one was not seen as so onerous back when people were fitter and used to almost continuous manual labour.
The nobility, of course, had their own chapels or churches incorporated into, or right next door, to their manor houses. So no long walk for them.
[ 13. November 2013, 15:16: Message edited by: Chorister ]
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Sighthound
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# 15185
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Posted
I think it's worth remembering that our ancestors were much more used to walking than we are. One of the reasons why railway companies could get away with building stations a mile or more from the place they were alleged to serve.
Certainly some rural parishes were huge, and not everyone had a horse, but (generally) everyone was expected to attend. If I had lived where I do now in the early middle ages I'd have had to walk to Middleton, which is a good five miles if it's an inch, or later to Prestwich, which is a good two or three. More convenient churches were not built until the 19th century. OK, there was a much smaller population back in the day, and it was quite scattered - but it was still there.
[ 13. November 2013, 15:37: Message edited by: Sighthound ]
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Zach82
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# 3208
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Posted
They also didn't have as many leisure options to distract from their Sunday obligation. Church, a nice, rowdy soccer game on the common, and a bloody roast beef were about the only activities on offer.
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Don't give up yet, no, don't ever quit/ There's always a chance of a critical hit. Ghost Mice
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american piskie
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# 593
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chorister:
New mothers wouldn't have been expected to get there until after they had been 'churched' - which, as far as I can tell, was at least a month after childbirth (commonly 40 dyas).
Scotswomen were not much churched after 1560 in the parish churches! I don't know what the custom was, and despite a lot of browsing today haven't been able to discover how long before/after birth women didn't go to church. The rule in small town Angus in the mid-20th Century, which must be a remnant of something, was that the mother did not re-appear in church or society before the christening, and that the "proper" time for that was the third Sunday after the birth.
All my browsing has thrown up is that in 1850 in Aberdeenshire something like 30% of the population attended Divine Service in the their parish church on a given Sunday. This is typical, although my small town scored 40%.
This fits, too, with the number of pew seats (to let): something like 35% I think. So even when the Disruption etc doubled that, that only provided 70% with a seat, whilst 90% approx were members or adherents of the competing presbyterian churches. (Aberdeenshire with its higher than average proportion of episcopalian dissenters might have been better served!)
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Augustine the Aleut
Shipmate
# 1472
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
Farmers didn't necessarily keep their own horses, especially tenants.
Perhaps a pond difference here: in much of rural Ontario, churches once featured sheds at the side so that horses could be sheltered from the cold during services-- from my first job, reviewing the 1851 and 1861 censuses for Augusta Township, almost every farm had several work- and riding-horses. Until the 1920s, when cars took over, most farmers used simple horse-drawn carriages or buggies to get to church. In rural Canada, churches were usually built at crossroads (with a small post office an general store, and in some places, a tavern, nearby), which explains the many villages with four churches at an intersection (Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, and something else, either Free or RC). In towns and villages, people normally walked 2-3 miles to church. In 1861, Prescott, Ontario, with 1200 residents, had 7 churches, most with 2 services a day.
I cannot offhand give figures for the Victorian period, although the journals of Abp John Travers Lewis in the latter part of the 1800s continually referred to the non-attendance of colonists, but by the 1950s and 1960s, I would say a majority of Ontarians could be found in a church of a Sunday-- now it would be about one in eight.
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Zach82
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# 3208
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Posted
Plenty of people had horses and rode buggies to church. I just don't imagine poor tenant farmers tended to do so. Maybe they did, who knows?
quote:
...which explains the many villages with four churches at an intersection (Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, and something else, either Free or RC).
That happens in the US a lot too. My last parish (Episcopal) was next door to a Disciples of Christ church, and across the street from a United Methodist church. Down the block was an American Baptist church.
[ 13. November 2013, 17:42: Message edited by: Zach82 ]
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Don't give up yet, no, don't ever quit/ There's always a chance of a critical hit. Ghost Mice
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Augustine the Aleut
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# 1472
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Posted
I think that the parallel might be current car ownership. Many poor people own cars; they're not often elegant or in great shape or new, but they're necessary to contemporary life. Universal horse ownership in the countryside struck me many years ago as I pored over the microfilms, enough that the fact stuck with me.
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pererin
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# 16956
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sighthound:
Certainly some rural parishes were huge,
That was to some extent a regional phenomenon. In northern England and Wales, the parishes were in general larger (and had more chapelries under them) than in the south.
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Sober Preacher's Kid
Presbymethegationalist
# 12699
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Posted
Several churches I have attended have pictures from their pasts featuring hitching posts outside the main door.
Contrary to no_prophet, pew rents were common in Ontario. The system started to die in the 1890's which explains why it may not have got much use out West. Many churches I've gone to have had either the rent number plaques still fitted on the pew or in one case still have their pew rent diagram. Pew rents are my theory as to why people still sit at the back of the church by preference and leave the front vacant; it was cheaper and/or free, and you weren't likely to be told to move by a Steward.
quote:
My question is this - did whole family groups go to church in rural areas, or was it normal for pregnant women, nursing mothers etc. to stay at home with the under-threes? In which case, were there women who were virtually never at church?
No, in the United Church and its predecessors, the women always turned out. Most farm families in Ontario didn't have servants and if you were absent a little to much, the Elders were supposed to inquire why. Then again, Ontario at this time featured very little tenanting; there were no lairds.
This part of Ontario, the Bay of Quinte Tract, is thick with United (from Methodist) churches built ten miles apart. In my township there are three rural United Churches, one in town and one closed.
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Zach82
Shipmate
# 3208
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Posted
In the United States, it was a common arrangement in frontier towns to have a community church of no particular denomination. Though they usually put on generic Protestant services, several congregations of different denominations might meet in the common church until they were wealthy and large enough to build their own churches. Otherwise, they would eventually get swept up into some congregational or Presbyterian denomination.
[ 13. November 2013, 20:46: Message edited by: Zach82 ]
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Don't give up yet, no, don't ever quit/ There's always a chance of a critical hit. Ghost Mice
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Sober Preacher's Kid
Presbymethegationalist
# 12699
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Posted
The same applied in Canada, though Canada's West didn't boom until 1895 - 1905. These formed the Association of Local Union Church which formed a strong impetus for the United Church. They're our somewhat forgotten fourth parent. The fifth is the Evangelical United Brethren.
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PaulBC
Shipmate
# 13712
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Posted
This reminded me of a section of Pierre Bertons "MARCHING AS TO WAR,Anchor Canada 2001"
He discuses the 1890-1910 era as the age of faith, pp 9-16. At 1 point he quotes Hugh Keenleyside as saying " that by 9 O'clock on Sunday night he had between worship and Sundaya school walked his 6 church mile and returned from the 4th service of the day" p 9
Yes there were fewertracytions at the end of the 19th century. But it also was a class thing even in Canada Anglicans considered the "state" or establishment church
Methodists, & Presbyterians the church of the
Masseys, etc and Baptists /evangelicals the church of the lower classes. Now let me say this is a picture that may not be true all over but a generalization.
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"He has told you O mortal,what is good;and what does the Lord require of youbut to do justice and to love kindness ,and to walk humbly with your God."Micah 6:8
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
I'm looking at the 1841 census, and the two households combined had four adults (i.e. two married couples), five older children (aged 14, 10, 9, 8 and 8) and seven younger children (aged 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 5 months and 4 months.) Plus two female servants. The logistics of a 3 mile plus walk to church, partially downhill, an hour long service and a three mile plus walk back, partially uphill seems difficult. The mothers would have their babies. If the servants came, rather than staying behind to prepare dinner, then they could take a toddler apiece. The fathers could deal with the rest of the younger children.
Or perhaps the younger children were left with the servants?
Scottish Sabbaths were supposed to be a day of rest! There could have been nothing restful about getting that lot into their Sunday best, walked to church, supervised through the service, and walked home (uphill!)
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Augustine the Aleut
Shipmate
# 1472
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Posted
My mother reminded me today that, from her confirmation in 1940, she was expected to attend two services a day as well as help out at the Sunday school at S Michael & All Angels in Toronto. She said that this was typical of her friends, and many churches used to have their youth service on Sunday evenings. The trams (10c) were too expensive, so they were expected to walk unless they were short and could get away for being under 12.
My father told me that they used to walk five miles to school dances near Renfrew and then five miles back--- I suspect that Victorians were even more accustomed to this.
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
Yes, I'm sure the Victorians were well used to walking and 3 miles plus would have been nothing to the adults and older children. It's more the fact that the family group had so many small children, continually, for years. A further two children had predeceased the 1841 census, dying at ages 5 and 1 - I think they account for the gap between the 14 and the 10 year old.
If these two mothers stayed at home with, say, each under-2, they would have been absent from church continually for over a decade. But if they went to church, then the family group of 16 in 1841 would have included 9 aged eight or under.
American piskie
quote:
All my browsing has thrown up is that in 1850 in Aberdeenshire something like 30% of the population attended Divine Service in the their parish church on a given Sunday.
That's very helpful, thanks. Do you know if this was 30% of adults or 30% of the population?
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american piskie
Shipmate
# 593
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
American piskie
quote:
All my browsing has thrown up is that in 1850 in Aberdeenshire something like 30% of the population attended Divine Service in the their parish church on a given Sunday.
That's very helpful, thanks. Do you know if this was 30% of adults or 30% of the population?
I thought about that yesterday after I posted. It's of population. (So my remark on the provision of seating was misguided). It's table 5 of Callum Brown, "Religion and Society in Scotland since 1707" on page 55 .. you can see that page in the preview at Google Books.
By the way I think it would be a two-hour service, not one hour. The logistics of the whole expedition on a raw February day in NE Scotland are, well, daunting!
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Sighthound
Shipmate
# 15185
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Posted
I have just remembered a story of a young David Lloyd-George, walking from Criccieth to Penmachno to preach a sermon. I'm not quite sure how far that is, but I'd be surprised if it's much less than 20 miles, and most of it uphill. I seem to recall he walked back the same day - he would have needed to be in his office in Caernarfon on Monday morning.
I think that is what you call commitment!
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Albertus
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# 13356
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Posted
Google Maps gives the distance as nearly 25 miles. But Ll G being the man he was, I suspect that it was at least as much a matter of commitment to his own high profile and good name among the Nonconformist electorate as it was to any Christian faith.
[ 14. November 2013, 08:52: Message edited by: Albertus ]
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Bishops Finger
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# 5430
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Posted
My late mother used to walk 3 miles to Church (UK - rural Kent - c.1920), sometimes twice per Sunday (Sunday School at 10am, followed directly by Mattins at 11am*, and then back again in the afternoon or evening for Evensong).
The church, isolated from its village, but serving a large farming parish, had a stable nearby for those arriving by equine - mostly the farmers, I should think, whose family names were marked on the various stalls. Alas, the stable was destroyed by fire a few years ago......
*The Yoof were allowed to leave before the sermon!
Ian J.
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Pearl B4 Swine
Ship's Oyster-Shucker
# 11451
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Posted
A very beautifully written diary of Victorian CofE clergy life - Francis Kilvert. It covers several years, ending in 1879. He worked in the Welsh border area of Shropshire. He walked many miles to his churches and chapels, and to visit with his parishioners. I wish he had written more about the content of the services, and such details as we SofFs are interested in.
Unfortunately many more volumes of his diary were destroyed by his wife of one month, and later family members. I love this book. If you don't know it, by all means get acquainted with it.
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"I do a good job and I know how to do this stuff" D. Trump (speaking of the POTUS job)
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Augustine the Aleut
Shipmate
# 1472
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Posted
Kilvert's diaries are wonderful reading and give us an interesting picture of a pre-industrial rural England just as the railways were making their impact. As Mr Kilvert was fond of describing the attractions of young women, his widow may have felt that he was too good a writer for his work to be preserved for a Victorian audience.
Another good clerical diary was that of Parson Woodford, but I will have to dig up my copy and review to see if has anything useful for this thread.
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
I think Woodford rather saw Divine Service as a slightly tiresome distraction from the serious business of dinner, didn't he?
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Basilica
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# 16965
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
I think Woodford rather saw Divine Service as a slightly tiresome distraction from the serious business of dinner, didn't he?
To be fair, I know clergy like that today.
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
It's clear from Woodford that in late C18 East Anglia, church attendance in cold winter weather declined to embarrassing levels. With a raw east wind off the North Sea, and no heating, it isn't surprising.
Mind, wouldn't that describe Aberdeenshire?
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Sandemaniac
Shipmate
# 12829
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Posted
Was there an ecclesiastical census carried out in 1851 in Scotland to match the English one, and if so might that help?
If I can get into it's new Yahoo group, I have a mailing list I can ask on, no promises of help, but...
I can't say that it's a timely or local example, but by c1914 in Essex/Suffolk, the children were packed off to Sunday School every Sunday without fail, big ones taking the little ones, because that's the only time their parents got on their own.
AG
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Zach82
Shipmate
# 3208
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Posted
Makes me think of a scene in Graham Greene's short story The Destructors. A crowd of breathtakingly unsupervised children are interrupted from their weekend project of destroying an elderly man's house by the requirement of going to Sunday School. ![[Snigger]](graemlins/snigger.gif)
[ 15. November 2013, 13:15: Message edited by: Zach82 ]
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Don't give up yet, no, don't ever quit/ There's always a chance of a critical hit. Ghost Mice
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Sandemaniac
Shipmate
# 12829
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Posted
I'm in, and I asked - will let you know what I get.
AG
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"It becomes soon pleasantly apparent that change-ringing is by no means merely an excuse for beer" Charles Dickens gets it wrong, 1869
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Bishops Finger
Shipmate
# 5430
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Posted
My own parish (small A-C urban UK) is recorded as having 400 children in the Sunday School in 1909, the year the church was built. Worship took place before then in a small Mission Church (now our church hall), but how they crammed 400 kidz in, I know not. There must have been some sort of shift/rota system!
I somehow doubt that there was a correspondingly large attendance of adults, though - there is some evidence that our current Evensong congregation of 12 was about that size in the 1930s.......
....apologies - we are straying from Victorian times!
Ian J.
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Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service. (Wilkie Collins)
Posts: 10151 | From: Behind The Wheel Again! | Registered: Jan 2004
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