“Perantiquum hunc fontem baptismalem e ruinis sacelli scī Jacobi Lancaut in comū Gloucē servatum refecit Guls̄ Hes̄ Marling Bars̄ A.D, 1890.”
The venerable relic stands in the hall at Sedbury Park.
PLATE VIII.
Norman Chapel, Llancaut, Wye Cliffs.
The history of the “Church” in our parish of Tidenham, whether interpreted as the body of believers or the building in which they worshipped, might be well taken, during about the fifty middle years of the past century, as an illustration of “changing times.” In the year 1826—or thereabouts—when my father purchased the property, Tidenham Church was no exception to many other churches in rural districts. The interior comes back to my remembrance as dark, dingy, and very decidedly damp, as shown by the green mould on pillars and walls. One of the first improvements was the placing of two good stoves in the church,—one presented by my father, and the other (rather, I believe, against local wishes) by the Parish. I well remember the presence of the stoves, as it was considered by the churchwardens, or whoever arranged these matters, that the time which was most decorous for stirring the fires was during the singing as “it drowned the noise.” What our local choir consisted of I do not remember, but I rather think it was simply vocal, and started by a “pitchpipe.” But at least there was nothing ridiculous about it. We did not, as in a church at no great distance, have the violinist and his instrument carried in on a man’s shoulders because the unfortunate musician was without legs!
The sittings for the congregation were (I suppose as a matter of course in those days) all in closed pews with doors—the pews of a size, form, and respectability of appearance, likewise of comfort and fittings, according to the social position of their holders. It could not, however, be said that the chief parishioners had the best places, for our two large, roomy, square seats were mounted up, side by side, a few steps above the others at the end of the north aisle, with a good wall between us and the chancel, effectually preventing our seeing what was going on in that direction. Within our special pew, which had curtains more or less drawn, we sat round with our feet at proper times on good high hassocks. When we knelt we all turned round and faced the sides of the pew, and my juvenile sorrows were sometimes great towards the end of the Litany. The fatigue from kneeling on the top of my unsteady perch produced faintness, and I well remember my anxieties increasing with the “odd” feeling till I mustered courage to announce to my eldest sister, whom I held in considerable awe, that I did not feel very well; and measures were taken accordingly. The pew was said to be just over where the soldiers were buried who were killed during the Parliamentarian war at the Battle of Buttington, a locality in the same parish; but on an occasion of some repairs being made, the flooring was discovered to be laid on, or close above the live rock, which rendered this view inaccurate. The surface of the ground was immediately below the floor, and as the family pew had on its east side one of the great east windows of the church, and on the north side a smaller one, both with small panes ill-leaded, and one with a very insufficiently fastened small window, our Sunday devotions in winter were anything but comfortable.
I believe the rural congregation behaved with great propriety, though certainly on one occasion it struck me that a reverence during the creed at the name of Pontius Pilate on the part of the wife of my father’s farm-bailiff, was somewhat out of place. But we were free from such lapses in decency of arrangement as occurred elsewhere. The pigeons did not roost in the tower, neither did a turkey sit on her eggs in the pulpit, which, considering that the time of incubation for the turkey hen is four weeks, must have interfered considerably with the due performance of service. Neither were we, so far as I remember, scandalised by attendance of dogs in church, whether avowedly accompanying their masters or making a voyage of discovery as to where their clerical owner might have vanished. And certainly we did not have the disgraceful circumstance which occurred in another church with which I was acquainted, of two ladies of good social position in the parish walking up to the rails of the communion table to receive the sacrament, followed by their great Newfoundland dog!
One practice—certainly objectionable, but perhaps not unusual in country parishes where the church was also used as the week-day schoolroom—was putting the bags holding the provisions which the children brought with them for their dinners on the communion table. I do not think that this was so very shocking, for no irreverence was intended. A table was a table in those days, and not an “Altar,” and looking back on the matter it does not appear clear where else the food could have been safely placed. I fancy there was no regular vestry and, excepting the floor, or the seats of the pews, there does not seem to me to have been any other place of moderately safe deposit. However, by and by a room was hired as a schoolroom, and the church was freed from the presence of the children and their dinners. I well remember our going over in form to hold some sort of an examination, which was wound up by my father (who was certainly better fitted to examine witnesses from the magistrate’s bench than to probe for what information our little uncivilised urchins possessed) electrifying the audience by desiring to know whether his examinee knew the use of a pocket-handkerchief. My mother was a more efficient aid by paying the schooling of all our own cottagers’ children, and also in allaying strife. On one occasion, when a woman wished to remove her children from the parish school because they were better taught at a recently established Unitarian school, she dexterously overcame the difficulty by stating she meddled with nobody’s conscience, but if the children went to the parish school she paid, and if they did not go she didn’t. We heard no more on the subject.
Some of our customs were very pretty. On Palm Sunday, that is the Sunday before Easter Sunday, sometimes known in our part and the district as “Flowering Sunday,” it was the custom to dress the graves with flowers. Friends of the family came from a long distance. A son of our head-gardener would come down from Scotland for the occasion, and the wealth of yellow daffodils and white narcissus, which grew by the Wye, close to the little church of Llancaut, helped greatly towards the decoration. Two Crown Imperials were a greatly admired addition which, season permitting, appeared to ornament one special grave. The “flowering” was a touching and pleasing remembrance of the friends whose bodies rested below, until in after years the custom gradually arose of placing artificial flowers along with the fresh blossoms, and then followed the much to be deprecated practice of putting little cases of flowers of tinsel, or anything that was approved of, which might remain on the grave. At Christmas time we had the real old-fashioned church decorations of good large boughs of holly, with plenty of red berries, mistletoe, laurel, and anything evergreen of a solid sort. The squire (i.e., my father) contributed a cartload of evergreen branches, and as a matter of course, they were applied largely to ornamenting our corner pew with more regard to appearance than comfort.
The service was performed simply, as was customary in those days, without any music excepting the singing of the hymns, but as nothing was omitted, and there was, I believe, no curate, it must have been rather fatiguing to the vicar, and it certainly was a terribly long business especially for those not always in good health, if they stayed for the Communion Service on the rare occasions on which it was administered. The drive from the Park to the bottom of the hill on which the Church stood, was upwards of two miles. Then came a wearying walk up the hill until this became so steep that in the Churchyard there were successive little arrangements of steps to help us up the ascent. Within, it seems to me, that the clergyman neither excused himself, nor us, anything that might have lightened the strain, bodily and mental, to the younger attendants. The creed of St. Athanasius was duly gone through as well as the Litany, and addresses, which nowadays are cut very short, came at full length. When, after the return drive, we got safely home, I will not say but that our spiritual state might have been better had our bodily condition been less open to the unsettling influence of a desire for a much-needed meal.