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This picture shows a curate and assorted female parishioners decorating the church with vegetable matter for a major festival.
(The picture is taken from A Tindal Hart, The Curate's Lot, 1970)

As we shall see, during Victorian times such decoration was taken very seriously. Books were written on how to do it properly.
 
 
 
 

The 'how-to-do-it'  picture to the left and the three below were published in 1868 in a book entitled Flowers and Festivals, or Directions for the Floral Decoration of Churches (author W. A. Barrett).

The author was riding the tide of a fashion.

This was not a case of artfully arranged flowers in pots, but of the full-blooded cladding of architectural forms with carefully constructed floral symbolism.

Font covers were constructed, temporary reredoses built behind the altar, pulpits smothered, and pillars wreathed. Screens and windows had their tracery improved with cusps and quatrefoils.
 

Peter Anson, in his marvellous book Fashions in Church Furnishings (1960) shows what the chancel of St Matthias, Stoke Newington looked like in 1870.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Thirty years later, in 1899, Ernest Geldart published his how to do it book, entitled A Manual of Church Decoration and Symbolism: containing directions and advice to those who desire worthily to deck the church at the various seasons of the year.

The image of the altar to the left was criticised - not for over-elaboration, but because the arches on the top were structurally redundant!

Geldart was happy to see imaginary window tracery (below left).

And he suggested that at these major festivals, a temporary screen could be introduced into the church if there was no permanent screen present (below right). This would be built on a timber frame, covered in evergreens etc.
 

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When did all this finish?

The tail-end of this sort of decoration is sometimes seen on postcards of the early years of this century.

To the left is an old postcard of Clovelly Church. Below, are High Wycombe, Rosslyn Chapel, and Rame.
 

Trevor Cooper
November 1999, revised and enlarged May 2000.
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