Staying Home

In Victorian society most middle class people went to church on Sundays but poorer people more often stayed at home. Flora Thompson talks about life among the poor farm workers in her village.

"If the Lark Rise people had been asked their religion, the answer of nine out of ten would have been 'Church of England', for practically all of them were christened, married and buried as such, although, in adult life, few went to church between the baptisms of their offspring.

The children were shepherded there after Sunday School and about a dozen of their elders attended regularly; the rest stayed at home, the women cooking and nursing and the men, after an elaborate Sunday toilet, which included shaving and cutting each other's hair and much puffing and splashing with buckets of water, but stopped short before lacing up boots or putting on a collar and tie, spent the rest of the day eating, sleeping, reading the newspaper and strolling round to see how their neighbours' pigs and gardens were looking.

There were a few keener spirits. The family at the inn was Catholic and was up and off to early Mass in the next village before others had turned over in bed for an extra Sunday morning snooze. There were also three Methodist families which met in one of their cottages on Sunday evenings for prayer and praise; but most of these attended church as well, thus earning for themselves the name of 'Devil dodgers'."

(Taken from 'Lark Rise to Candleford' by Flora Thompson, chapter 14, 'To Church on Sunday'. Used by permission of Oxford University Press)