SOME REMARKABLE SERVICES
IN VARIOUS PARTS OF THE COUNTRY.
(Photo: K. J. Harrison and Co., Kewaigue, Isle of Man.)
SUNDAY AT KIRK BRADDAN.
Up and down the country there are several religious services held which are remarkable, not so much on account of the character of the service as in consequence of the strange places in which they take place. Of course, there are strange services—a few of which are detailed later—but,/ nevertheless, the majority obtain their notoriety by reason of their unusual place of assembly.
For instance, who has not heard of the famous open-air service at Kirk Braddan churchyard in the Isle of Man?—a service which on an August Bank Holiday Sunday has attracted a congregation of twelve thousand people. Indeed, so great has been the crush on occasions that it has been impossible for the collection plate to reach all those gathered within sound of the preacher's voice—a truly lamentable fact from the churchwardens' point of view.
If the weather is fine, these open-air services begin, as a rule, on Whit Sunday and continue to the end of September, or, virtually during the whole of the holiday season. They were instituted in a somewhat remarkable way by a former vicar, "Parson Drury," as he was familiarly called, when it was decided to build Kirk Braddan New Church in consequence of the old church falling out of repair and being altogether inadequate as far as size was concerned for the worshippers who attended. Accordingly, while the new church was in process of erection, Mr. Drury conceived the happy idea of using the spacious churchyard, and so popular was the innovation that it has been kept up in the summer ever since.