If the family was the hub of our life, that hub revolved about the Chapel – New House Hill United Methodist Free Church to give it its full name, but more usually abbreviated to ‘New House Hill’. In its later years, the Chapel bore the more recognisable title of Mellor Methodist Church.
Sunday was a busy day. There were three services – Chapel at 10.30 in the morning and 6.0 in the evening, and Sunday School at 2 o’clock. May and I were expected to go at least in the morning and the afternoon; we were not sent, for our parents went too, and we accompanied them. As we got older, we went in the evenings as well, until we were old enough to plead homework (delayed over the weekend until the last possible moment) as an excuse for non-attendance.
The Chapel was typical of its period – box pews down the sides, bench pews in the centre divided in a staggered pattern of five on this side and four on that alternately. The walls were distempered in an institutional buff colour, with a stencilled dado above the box pew sides. Over the pulpit ran a scroll in Gothic script: Worship the Lord in the Beauty of Holiness. The pulpit desk bore a large red velvet cushion to support the massive bible. When a member died, the cushion was temporarily replaced with a black one with long tassels at the corners.
Alongside the pulpit stood the organ, which my father played for 60 years until his death in 1977. It had an old case with ‘new’ (1913) pipework; one manual, no pedals, and five stops. It was nevertheless an instrument of good voice and sufficient power, provided the organ blower – wedged into a tight corner – did his stuff! The office of organ blower was distinguished by an annual salary of ten shillings (50p) – not bad when the organist got nothing!
The organist was discreetly screened from the congregation by a red curtain supported by a brass rail. A sudden movement by the organist could dislodge the rail from its supports, and it would occasionally fall with a splendid crash, to reveal Father searching through his music during the sermon. Behind this curtain I, too, took refuge when I first went to Chapel. Demanding to sit ‘near Daddy’, I was allowed a small seat between the organ stool and the blower’s handle – it must have been the smallest pew in the world!
Frank O’Connor was the first organ blower I encountered. He introduced me to chewing gum during the sermon; unable to get rid of this strange sweetmeat, I rolled it between my fingers into several small pellets and swallowed them one by one. Frank’s successor was Myles Arnfield – a true son of Mellor who was badly wounded in the D-Day landings, and who later represented his village for many years on the Marple Urban District Council, being its Chairman on three occasions. Myles left a valuable memento at his post alongside the organ (besides his initials in the woodwork) in the shape of a hymn book in which he recorded the tunes to which we had sung each hymn. His favourites were further annotated with a ‘Good’ and sometimes with ‘Very Good’ (I should add that a few hymns were marked ‘Poor’). That book was invaluable to my father and his successor (myself) for many years after Myles had yielded his pump handle to me.
In front of the organ were the choir stalls – three rows of pews: the back one for the basses and tenors, notably John Lynn, the choirmaster, Tom Sigley and Sydney Morton; the middle one for the contraltos, including Mrs ‘Pattie’ Lynn and Mrs Annie Morton; the front one for the sopranos, of whom Norah Sidebotham and Prudence Renshaw come readily to mind. The deeper voices were lucky in that they had book rests springing from the pews in front of them. The sopranos had to hold their music, which always seemed unfair to me, since they always looked the frailest of the choristers.
Across the back of the Chapel, over the entrance porch, ran the gallery. Reached by a steep winding stair, it was used only if some special occasion demanded extra seating capacity, when the teenagers of the day would occupy it, accompanied by feet shuffling on bare boards, rustling sweet papers and suffocated chuckles.
There were never any flowers in the Chapel. The communion table stood below the pulpit, bare except for the diminutive font. Flowers in Chapel were thought (by one autocratic lady, at least) to be a step towards Rome. So there were no flowers – except at the Harvest Festival or similar events.
In my boyhood the practice of ‘pew rents’ was observed as a way of raising a little extra income. Regular worshippers had their favourite pew, in which they invariably sat. Every quarter they paid sixpence for each seat in the pew, and they would find a little bill awaiting them: ‘To 5 sittings in Pew No 10, two-and-sixpence’ (12½ p). A visitor would be courteously guided to a pew where he could sit without infringing someone’s lease!
The Sunday morning service followed the regular pattern familiar to nonconformists everywhere, and nowadays given the somewhat derogatory title of a ‘hymn sandwich’. The first item between the hymns was an extempore prayer, often long and wearisome, supplying the Almighty with much gratuitous information. Then the Lord’s Prayer, set to a simple harmony.
After the second hymn came the first lesson, usually from the Old Testament. Then the high-spot of the service – the Children’s Address. Most of our preachers could be relied upon to have a word with the children, however few in number, and how we grumbled if we were overlooked! Most of these addresses were simple homilies, often with more of a humanitarian basis than a Christian one. Two I remember clearly; the first from an old man from Hayfield who walked the four miles to take the service, and who spoke in the local dialect. “As I were comin’ ’ere this mornin’,” he told us, “I passed a notice that said ‘This ’ouse to let’. Why i’n’t it a ’ome to let?” He went on to point out the difference between a ‘house’ and a ‘home’.
Then there was the address by Mr Parkinson, a schoolmaster from Manchester, who always started off in the same way: “I don’t think I’ve told you this story before . . .” After he had told this one, he added: “It’s a funny thing, but if you read one story, you often read a similar one to it . . .” We knew exactly what was coming – the two stories were the same every time, quarter after quarter, year after year. I must have heard those stories a dozen times at least. One was about the illuminated text found framed in old-fashioned houses: ‘Thy God Seeth Thee’. The other concerned a white planter in Africa who kept his slaves in order when he was absent by placing his glass eye on a post in his field!
Another hymn, then the notices and the collection. The second lesson – from the New Testament this time. If the preacher was Mr Lucas, a little tailor from Withington, he would invariably read one of St Paul’s epistles; perhaps he felt a close affinity with the tentmaker of long ago, who was also short of stature. If it was the letter to the Colossians, Mr Lucas would make a deliberate spoonerism about the ‘Epistle of Paul the Colossal to the Apostlians’. Somewhere in his second prayer, which usually followed the second lesson, would appear two lines from Cowper:
Precepts and promises afford
A sanctifying light.
Then came the fourth hymn, and then the sermon, regarded by my elders as the central part of the service. For me and my friends, the chance to suck a surreptitious sweet, to make rabbits out of our handkerchiefs, or to communicate by finger-spelling.
Twenty minutes . . . thirty . . . forty for Mr Parkinson. Then the last hymn, the Benediction, and we were away at last. The organ played a rousing march to speed us on our way home. And speed was necessary. There was just enough time for our mid-day meal, to learn the Golden Text (of which more anon), and to wash our hands and faces before we were hurrying up the road to Sunday School.
Here the same people who had been to morning service were gathered together, for there were as many adults as children attending the School. We youngsters sat in rows on the hard forms, our teachers at the end of each row. The remaining adults sat at one side. Father was again providing the music by officiating at the piano. Old Peter Sigley (Tom’s father) was our first Superintendent, followed by Mr W H Lynn and later by Tom himself.
After two hymns and a prayer, the Superintendent would call for those who had learned the Golden Text, A few hands were raised, and each in turn stood and haltingly repeated the verse so recently committed to memory. Special leaflets were issued to all the scholars every quarter with the texts for the forthcoming thirteen weeks, but only a few kept the papers and learned the texts.
Then the School divided into classes – groups of children in odd corners or behind the piano. The very young had a room to themselves, as did the adults. This senior class listened to an exposition by the Superintendent each week – a duty which clearly entailed much devoted and patient labour on his part.
After classes we sang a hymn and then went home in the summer, but in the winter (or was it the other way round?) we had a further extension in the shape of an address by one or other of the adults. John Lynn, a keen gardener, whose roses were his pride and joy, always drew a moral from nature. Sydney Morton, a keen cricketer, whose uncle had played for Derbyshire, would recount the words on a cricketer’s grave in Eyam churchyard:
For when the one Great Scorer comes
To write against your name,
He writes – not that you lost or won
But how you played the game.
I remember being very annoyed with Grandfather Heath for deciding not to give an address, but to hold a prayer meeting instead!
There was just time for tea before evening service. I always liked the evening best of all – the gas lamps hissing gently, the sky turning pink outside the windows. The comfortable evening hymn: The day Thou gavest to the tune of St Clement, with the choirmaster abandoning his bass part to join the tenors in those three penetrating notes in the penultimate bar.
Many of our preachers came from far afield, from Chorlton-cum-Hardy maybe or Middleton, and would make their journey worthwhile by staying in Mellor for the day, and conducting both services. This meant that they had to be entertained to lunch and tea by one or other of the church members. Each family had its own favourite preachers, and regularly, probably twice a quarter, Mother would stay at home on Sunday morning to prepare a special meal for Mr Parkinson or Mr Pollard. The dessert on these occasions was always a sponge with stewed apple and custard, which May and I irreverently dubbed “Parson’s Pudding”.
We belonged, in true Methodist fashion, to a ‘Circuit’ of churches centred on New Mills: Hayfield, Birch Vale, Thornsett, Furness Vale and Rowarth. Occasionally, in the summer, we indulged in a religious exercise by holding an early morning service in one of these churches, involving a walk of three miles or more over the hill and back before our normal morning service. What zeal we must have displayed! Or was it just our love of walking those beautiful hills as the day began? Whatever it was, it produced a glow of righteous satisfaction and a healthy appetite. With first-hand knowledge might we sing
Sweetly the holy hymn
Breaks on the morning air;
Before the world with smoke is dim
We meet to offer prayer.
In retrospect, it seems that the Christian festivals of Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide received. but passing notice at Chapel. Our great occasions were the Harvest Festival and the Sunday School Anniversary. No, not the Sunday School Anniversary; that is too modern a name. In my young days, it was always the ‘Sermons’, probably because the posters always announced Two Sermons will be Preached in the boldest type.
Held on the first Sunday in July, the Sermons were preceded by a considerable amount of rehearsing by the children, and two evening rituals by the men. Rehearsals took place immediately after Sunday School ended, and although a few boys always managed to sneak out with the adults, most of us stayed to learn some new hymns, the better singers being given verses to sing as solos.
The men’s rituals were, in chronological order, Choosing the Hymns and Putting Up the Platform. Father attended both these mysterious occasions – the first in his capacity as organist and the second as an able-bodied male. Some ten congregational hymns had to be selected in time for hymn sheets to be printed, and often they were a medley of personal favourites rather than a coherent pattern of worship and praise. But everyone would be sure of a ‘good sing’.
The platform had to be erected during the week immediately prior to the Sermons. It filled the space between the front pew and the communion rail, and was carpeted and fitted out with three forms on which we children could sit having, in modern parlance, an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with the congregation. This apparently solid platform was a structure of benches and bible boxes supporting table tops. Old hymn books were used as packing, and somehow it always survived the day.
Sermons Sunday was most unusual. Although it was the high point of our year, the morning service was abandoned, and its place taken by a final rehearsal, making sure we all knew our places on the platform. There was, in fact, no time for a morning service, because the afternoon began at 1.15. At this incredibly early hour we assembled in the schoolroom, and those boys who had played truant from rehearsals were now co-opted to give out the hymn-sheets. ‘Hymns for Outside’ the first sheet was called, for we were about to walk (weather permitting) in procession through Moor End, halting to sing at selected points en route.
Our first stop, and our turning point, would be the Oddfellows’ Arms, where there was a convenient place to stand, and plenty of people in the pub and the nearby cottages to hear us. This would be an occasion for Sydney Morton’s favourite Hark my soul to the tune of St Bees, which has such an attractive tenor part – perhaps one reason for Sydney’s attachment to it.
Then down the road to the entrance of the old quarry. Here we would sing again: A little child may know, perhaps. Then to Sundial, where the open square made a delightful setting. And so to the Chapel yard, in those days a grassy space. Here the favourite would be
Glad was my heart to hear
My old companions say:
“Come, in the house of God appear,
For ’tis a holy day.”
As we finished the hymn, the children were shepherded away into Sunday School, except for the hymn sheet boys, who were posted at the door. The rest of us, with our hair combed, would appear in Chapel just before the service began, preceding the preacher rather like an orchestra precedes its conductor.
My father was having a day off, for today the organist would be a Mr Barlow from Stockport, who always played for the Sermons. The choir, too, stood down in favour of the Stockport Singers, who gave us two or three anthems during the day.
After the afternoon service came tea. Mother made it one of her family gatherings, and I have always associated the Sermons with fresh salmon and strawberries. Visiting friends would also be invited to ‘Beaumont’, and for many years Kathleen Flood (daughter of a deceased local preacher) and her widowed mother would come over from Didsbury. They were not very cheerful company and, if it was a wet day, Father would quote in lugubrious tones from the parable of the house built upon a rock: “The rains descended, and the Floods came.”
For many visitors, tea was provided in the schoolroom. While the afternoon service had been in progress, a few privileged ladies under the supervision of ‘Aunt Ann’ Morton (Sydney’s maiden aunt and the lady so opposed to flowers in Chapel) would set out a sumptuous spread of which one essential ingredient was always Aunt Ann’s currant bread. This delicacy contained, I swear, more currants than bread. It was in great demand at all Sunday School functions.
The evening service commenced at the unusually late hour of 6.30, thus giving everyone ample time for tea. The service followed a similar pattern to the afternoon, with possibly more singing from the choir and less from the children.
The collection was invariably taken immediately before the sermon, and old Sunday School scholars would find offertory boxes slipped into their hands and a brief instruction whispered into their ears during the first hymn. It was impossible to place the collection on the communion table owing to the presence of the platform, and so these press-ganged stewards marched out at the back of the church and down into the Sunday School along with the Treasurer to count the money. I always envied these men, who thus dodged the sermon. During the last hymn, the Treasurer returned and passed a paper to the preacher, disclosing the total for the day. Before the Benediction, we were told this figure, for this was for many the most important thing. “What was the collection?” was the first question asked by those who had missed the Sermons. Certainly it was an occasion for generous giving; pound notes could be seen in the offertory boxes when thirty shillings (£1.50) was a week’s wage.
The Harvest (first Sunday in October) also entailed considerable preparation – this time on the preceding Saturday afternoon. Bunches of grapes hung from the pulpit; the drawing-pins which supported them were left in place from year to year. Chrysanthemums and late roses filled the space behind the communion rail. The ventilators on the window sills sprouted Michaelmas daisies; baskets of eggs, loaves of bread, tomatoes, marrows and cauliflowers rubbed shoulders with apples, pears, potatoes and cabbages. This was a day for the ladies; humbler mortals might be called on to fetch buckets of water or to place flowers in inaccessible places, but it was the ladies who arranged the display of fruit and vegetables.
Oh, the smell of the Chapel decked out for the Harvest! It was like a greengrocer’s and a florist’s rolled into one. The day could begin in only one way, and the Harvest hymn broke forth in all its well-loved splendour:
Come, ye thankful people, come;
Raise the song of harvest home.
This was the day when the choir (who had been rehearsing for the past few weeks) would render an anthem, probably Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem with its reference
The valleys stand so thick with corn
That they laugh and sing.
And the day could not end without the Manx fishermen’s hymn Hear us, O Lord, from Heaven Thy dwelling place, reminding us in a farming community of that other harvest of the sea.
But the Chapel provided not only our spiritual needs; it was also our social and cultural centre. With the Harvest behind us, the season of concerts, parties and discussion groups could begin.
The ‘Guild’ which met on Wednesday nights throughout the winter provided our elders with lectures and debates on religious and secular themes. But as the evenings closed in, Friday nights meant rehearsals for the Sunday School Concert. Off we set in the winter’s dark, carrying our ‘flashlights’ (the word ’torch’ was not in common use before the War). A few adults would be waiting for us in the schoolroom – Mrs Lynn to play the piano, and Amy Morton (Sydney’s sister; there seemed to be an unmarried daughter in every generation of the Morton family, a tradition which Sydney’s daughter Kathleen continued) was on hand to teach us some simple action songs. The Teddy Bears’ Picnic was a great favourite; we all marched on with our teddies and sat down amongst a fine display of dolls’ cups and saucers.
Individuals were encouraged to perform solo turns. A simple piano piece, a recitation, a song (preferably involving dressing-up) were all certain hits with the Mums and Dads.
At last the night of the Concert came. It always seemed to snow, and there would be much stamping of feet and blowing on hands as everyone arrived in the steamy atmosphere of the schoolroom. A Chairman would have been appointed – a local worthy who could be relied on to tell a few suitable stories and slip a fiver into the collection.
But it was Tom Sigley who opened the proceedings by asking us to sing a hymn. He read out each verse before we sang it, but many of us knew the words off by heart, for it was the one we always sang before the Concert:
Praise ye the Lord! ’Tis good to raise
Your hearts and voices in His praise;
His nature and his works invite
To make this duty our delight.
And so into the programme, after a few words from our Chairman, who introduced each item. First the Choir, whilst we children nervously prepared in one of the classrooms for our introductory song. Then a duet from Mesdames Renshaw and Morton: Night of Stars, followed by Come to the Fair as an encore.
Recitations revealed the current taste in poetry at Mellor School. Walter de la Mare was usually very popular. But we were all waiting for John Lynn to sing in his rich baritone voice. At last he was announced: “The Sergeant Major”. "Encore!" we shouted as soon as he had finished, knowing what must surely follow. Would he sing it again this year? Of course he would! And John reappeared on the platform with his painted cardboard tube and proceeded to sing The Bassoon Song:
I will go (oom pah pah)
To my love (oom pah pah)
“If you’ll be my (oom)
I’ll be happy for (oom);
You’re lovely, so (oom pah pah pah)!”
This inevitable turn was rivalled by Sydney Morton’s comedy rendering of:
I’m in love wi’ Susan,
And Susan’s in love wi’ I;
And I’m goin’ to marry Susan
When the bloom is on the rye.
Oh, how I wish the bloomin’ bloom
Was on the bloomin’ rye!
There would also be a duet by Tom Sigley and John Lynn to a simple tune with a chorus in which we could all join. The verses were written specially each year, and referred to topical events and local people. The chorus was delightfully easy to learn:
What! What! What!
What! What! What! What! What! What!
What! What! What! What! What!
What What!
My Aunt Florence could be relied on for a monologue, probably the one about a college student who was innocently entertaining his sister in his rooms. His motives were misinterpreted by an elderly visitor, himself a previous occupant, who recognised the ‘same old carpet in the hall, same old pictures on the wall’. The student’s explanation of his relationship to the young lady was in vain:
“Ah!" said the old one with a sigh;
“The same old lie! The same old lie!”
After the interval, when the walls ran with condensation from the steaming tea urns, and we consumed sandwiches and cakes, the teenagers would ‘do their own thing’ as we would say today. The music became more modern, and the dance tunes of the day echoed round the room, accompanied on paper and comb. There were sketches in true concert party fashion, usually involving a ‘fall guy’ on whom the tables were remorselessly turned.
At last everyone had appeared before a rapturous audience, and the final item was announced. The choir, of course, with The Long Day Closes. The Benediction was pronounced, and we all scrambled for our scarves and wellingtons. The Concert was over, but soon there would be another one given by friends from another local church, or by a male voice choir.
The winter festivities would not have been complete without the Romping Party or Children’s Treat. This was another Saturday affair, just before Christmas, starting at teatime. “Tea on the tables at five o’clock” the notice always ran. There was Butcher Hall’s potted meat, Aunt Ann’s currant bread, and tinned fruit entombed in jelly of every hue imaginable – prepared during the afternoon by the ladies of the Chapel, all wearing their hats as well as their aprons.
After tea the games began, with Sydney Morton as Master of Ceremonies. Many of the games had no end point and no winner, but no-one seemed to mind. The most popular in this category involved beating someone with a rolled-up newspaper, and sitting down before they could retaliate. ‘Jolly Miller’ was another interminable game of obscure purpose.
‘Musical Mat’ or ‘Musical Chairs’ usually produced a winner, even if he (or she) did have to cheat a little. ‘Spinning the Trencher’ was a chance to steal a kiss from one’s current favourite, and ‘Postman’s Knock’ was not unknown.
In the middle of this jollification, Father Christmas would arrive with a present for every child in the room. He would not leave until we had sung a carol, and then his reindeers’ antlers (a borrowed hatrack) would be seen passing the window. We older boys spent most of this time guessing who was underneath the disguise, to much ’shush-ing’ from our parents.
There was one more winter event – the Annual Prizegiving. At New House Hill, every scholar received a prize ‘for good attendance’, as the book-plate on the fly-leaf stated, duly signed by the Superintendent and the Secretary. The prizes were in three classes, depending on the number of attendances in the year. The books were priced at 1/6, 2/- and 2/6 (7½ p, 10 p and 12½ p).
The prizes were distributed in Sunday School after lessons, often by the preacher who was with us for the day. Each child dutifully trotted up to the platform as his name was called, and there were always a few agonised whispers of “I’ve got it already!”
Summer, too, brought its joys, and the Sunday School Trip, in the days when personal transport was almost unknown, was our chance to see the countryside around us. There were train journeys to Monsal Dale and Bakewell, and bus rides to Derbyshire villages like Eyam and Great Longstone. After an impromptu game of cricket or rounders in a field, there would be tea in the local Sunday School before we set off for home. I retain a vivid impression of a wet Saturday evening on the steep hill of Axe Edge, with John Lynn placing stones from a nearby wall behind the wheels of a reluctant bus. But somehow we all got home safely, even though someone invariably sat in some mud or fell into a pond.
So we passed through the cycle of Sermons, Harvest, Concert, Romping Party, Prizegiving and Sunday School Trip. For us children, these were the milestones in our Christian year.