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When City Speaks for County: The Emergence of the Town as a Focus for Religious Activity in the Nineteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Alan Rogers
Alan Rogers*
Affiliation:
University of Nottingham
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Extract

The theme of this paper is an attempt to establish when the town emerged as a focal point for religious activity for a set district in the nineteenth century. I have some hesitations in setting about the task, for we are dealing here with attitudes, with what die French call l’histoire des mentalités, and it is not at all clear that all the evidence exists. I propose, however, to use three examples—circuit records from the Louth area of Lincolnshire, diaries (again from Lincolnshire), and a rather briefer case-study of Saint Mary’s church, Nottingham. Apart from the last, it may be agreed that these particular instances are not typical of Victorian England—that the towns are small and not industrialised, unlike Bradford or Bristol; and that the area is large and diversified unlike a county like Leicestershire where almost all roads lead to the county town. Nevertheless, both the enquiry and the range of evidence can be justified; and the conclusion—that the town emerged as a focal point for religious activities later than for other more secular functions—may be applicable to other areas.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 16: The Church in Town and Countryside , 1979 , pp. 335 - 359
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1979

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References

1 Oxford Bodleian MS Eng misc e 351. I must acknowledge with deep gratitude the help of the following: D. N. Robinson (Louth), D. G. Stuart and J. H. Briggs (Keele).

2 Obelkevich, [J.], [Religion and Rural Society] (Oxford 1976) pp 116-17,119,191Google Scholar. Obelkevich’s important study of the Louth area is the basis of all further study, but he omits the town from his examination of rural religion.

3 W. Leary, Wesleyan Circuits in Lincolnshire (privately printed).

4 L[incolnshire] A[rchives] O[ffice], Louth Circuit records.

5 LAO Louth Circuit, Register of Baptisms.

6 For this information and other material on the Louth circuit, I owe thanks to W. Leary of Lincoln whose collection of circuit plans has proved most useful.

7 The same instruction is given on the Lincoln plan for 1835 on the occasion of the opening of the ‘Big Wesley’ there.

8 Obelkevich pp 185, 215.

9 LAO, Louth Circuit records.

10 Ibid.

11 Mossman, T. W., ’The Church in Lincobshire’, Union Review 3 (Lincoln 1865)Google Scholar.

12 LAO, Mass 8/1.

13 Obelkevich pp 125-7.

14 The reverend Clement Madeley, vicar of Horncastle.

15 Bodl MS Eng misc e 351 : transcript in LAO Mise Don 125.

16 LAO, Winn I/I; see Obelkevich p 335.

17 LAO, Mass 9/2.

18 Hole, C., Early History of the Church Missionary Society (London 1896)Google Scholar; Hill, [J. W. F.], Victorian Lincoln (Cambridge 1974) pp 175-6Google Scholar; Hill, , ‘Early days of a society’, Lincolnshire History and Archaeology (Lincoln 1966) pp 57-63Google Scholar. I owe the information on Kislingbury to my student S. E. Payler.

19 I owe the transcript to Miss Jean Stovin who is editing the diary under my supervision; the analysis is mine but I am most grateful to Miss Stovin for her comments. The diary is in private possession.

20 A few years are missing. The diary is in private possession; a transcript has been made by my student John Liddie.

21 Obelkevich pp 226-27, 237, 245, 256. For Leicestershire, I owe the information to D. M. Thompson; for Nottinghamshire, see Bebbington, D., History of a Nottingham Baptist Church (Nottingham 1977)Google Scholar.

22 Gay, J. D., Geography of Religion in England (London 1971) p 163 Google Scholar.

23 I owe this suggestion to R. W. Ambler of Hull University, to whom I am grateful for general comments on this paper.

24 Obelkevich pp 205, 213.

25 Hoskins, J. P.. ‘The Dean of Stamford’, Lincolnshire Architectural and Archaeological Society Reports and Papers 3 (Lincoln 1945) pp 18-35Google Scholar.

26 They were not in existence when William Dansey published the first edition of his Horae Decanicae Rurales in 1835, but they had been revived by the time of the second edition, 1844.

27 Weiler, J. C., Say to the Wind (Nottingham c1959)Google Scholar.

28 Rogers, A., ‘Religion in Nottingham in the nineteenth century’, Town and Village, ed Phillips, J.F (Nottingham 1972) pp 48-9Google Scholar; first annual report (1863-4) of Saint Mary’s church, N[ottinghamshire] C[entral] L[ibrary], Local Collection.

29 London Gazette 27 September 1877; NCL, Local Collection Box L 24; annual reports, Saint Mary’s church, 1863-1914.

30 Stapleton, A., The Churches and Monasteries of Old and New Nottingham (Nottingham 1903) p 29 Google Scholar; Hood, J.C. F., An Account of St Mary’s Church, Nottingham (Nottingham 1910) pp 31, 59-61Google Scholar; Nottingham Journal 4 July 1887; Nottinghamshire Record Office, PR (St Mary’s) 2077; PR 6238 fols 470-77; PR 9730-36; St Mary’s Church, Nottingham, its past and present history (no author) (Nottingham 1874).

31 Rogers, A., Approaches to Local History (London 1977) pp 136-9Google Scholar.

32 Everitt, A. M., Tlie Pattern of Rural Dissent; the nineteenth century (Leicester 1972)Google Scholar suggests social and economic reasons for differing patterns of rural independence.

33 Gilbert, A. D., Religion and Society in Industrial England (London 1976)Google Scholar; Currie, R., Gilbert, A. and Horsky, L., Churches and Churchgoers (Oxford 1977) pp 5-9Google Scholar.