The Death of Christian Britain

— Personal Testimony and Religion 1800–1950 —
And when we were old enough we had to go to church with him
[father] on a Sunday morning. We used to walk four miles. We were
all brought up, right from children, to go to Sunday school, and you
never forget it, no. ... We weren’t allowed to gallivant about on a
Sunday, you know. Oh no. You had to get a book and sit. Oh there
was nothing done on a Sunday. 113
In Roman Catholic communities, chapelgoing by the late nineteenth
century was very strong. Arthur Turner from Hankey Park in Manchester
recalled: ‘Well, nearly everybody in street went to church Sundays you
know. Oh aye, nearly all Catholics near there.’ 114 William Pugh recalled
life in a North Wales farming valley where virtually every living soul
was shackled to the chapel. On Sundays, with a three mile walk to chapel,
his sixty-nine-year-old grandfather went in the morning, both his parents
went morning and evening, and William went three times (attending the
Sunday school in the afternoon). His father led the chapel singing, there
was family worship morning and night during the week conducted by his
grandfather, and grace was said before all meals. For household reading
the family took the evangelical newspaper The Banner and, though mother
was too busy ‘from rise to bedtime’ to read, ‘my father and grandfather
used to sit by the fire and read. And they’d read biographies. The stories
of people.’ 115
Between the 1880s and 1940s, many homes had important religious artefacts.
The family Bible was common, and multiple Bibles for different
members of the family were usual in better-off families. Households had
some special books brought out on Sundays ‘as a treat’: ‘the very big Bible
with the pictures in. Oh David, the very big giant with blood gushing out
of his forehead where the stone had hit him, you know, and it was marvellous.
I loved that.’ 116 Magazines of a religious, ‘improving’ and domestic
nature were widespread: The Christian Herald, Home Journal, Home
Words, Home Notes, Good Words, The Penny Illustrated, the Boy’s Own
and Girl’s Own Papers. Dora Bucknell born in 1882 in Hull recalled
Horner’s Penny Stories: ‘They were very sentimental. Very sentimental sort
of love stories, and a bit of religion in them as well, these books had. I
used to skip the religion and the romantic bits and get on with the story
[laughter].’ 117 Asked if there were any books in her household, a woman
from a very poor family in Preston recalled: ‘We had our books. We got
a Sunday school prize, you see, and we had to read them and the first book
I ever remember reading was Jessica’s First Prayer, or something like that.
I had that book for years.’ 118 For books, Dickens, Scott and Thackeray,
usually recited as a threesome, clearly outnumbered the rest in the British
household of 1900. Decoration was also important. Whilst Catholic and
some Anglican homes displayed crucifixes, many Nonconformist homes
had religious pictures. Mr Wash, born 1899 in Halstead in Essex, lived in
141