It is easy to think that the traditional church harvest festival surrounded by produce is an incredibly ancient tradition, stretching back hundreds of years, but this, as a custom only goes back to the mid 19th Century.
On 18th September 1855, a Harvest Home Celebration took place in the village of Banham, Norfolk, this was a public tea meeting, held on the green, with addresses delivered by Ministers of various denominations, chaired by the Right Honorable, the Earl of Albermarle. The tea meeting was to be a celebration without the need for alcohol, part of his task to “reform the manners of the Eastern Counties,” to which he thought that “the great stain of social life in England among the humbler classes had been drunkenness.. and had been the cause of three-fifths of the crime and poverty and misery perpetrated or endured by the English peasant and artisan” [1].
The year following, a correspondence began between the Earl of Albemarle and the Reverend Dr William Beal, about the Banham festival. The Reverend Beal suggested “the harvest home should be parochial in its character, and commence with Divine service in the parish church, and in the words of Mr Ensor, should be strictly “confined to the parish,” I am persuaded that large gatherings must tend to evil.” [2]
The spread of this new celebration reached Morpeth on 30th September 1861. Tradesmen closed their shops and businesses in the afternoon to enable those employed to take part in the festival. Children from schools in Morpeth, Ulgham and Hepscott met at the Rectory and marched along to St James Church for the service, followed by tea and cake in the schoolroom, and a concert in the evening.[3]
The Illustrated London News covered the Harvest Home at Bywell in 1865, –
“The pleasant and rational custom of holding a village festival to accompany the due thanksgiving service in the parish church on the completion of harvest is spreading widely, of late years, through the southern and western counties of England. We are glad to find that it has likewise extended as far north as the banks of the Tyne. The arrangements were made, as in the two previous years by a local committee whose honorary secretary is the Rev. T. Thornton, Curate of Bywell St. Peter’s while the proprietors of Hindley Hall and Stocksfield Hall, bestowed their patronage on the undertaking. Above 1300 tickets were sold, being double the number of last year, since the attractions of the festival had become notorious, and brought many visitors to the place. Soon after twelve o’clock a procession, with a band of music set out from the school-house, which is shown in the illustration, and marched to St. Peter’s Church, where divine worship was performed, and a collection was made “To provide a fund for the purpose of assisting sick harvest labourers, or members of their families, in going to the sea or to the wells for change of air in case of need”. After the Church service all went in procession, as before, to the field where the dances and games were to take place, beginning with a country dance to the tune of “Corn Rigs,” the next dance being a reel to the tune of “Speed the Plough.” Running-races, hurdle-races, and leaping matches, for such prizes as a pig, a spade, a flannel shirt, a wideawake hat, a knife, a teapot and a pair of blankets, excited the valour and agility of the young men of Bywell; there was also a race of jumping in sacks, the prize for which, given by Mr F. Ayton, was an elegant paraffin lamp, fit for the drawing-room table. At five o’clock there was a substantial tea, or what is called in the north “a thick tea”, provided for the whole company in a spacious marquee erected near the schools; this cheerful meal was followed by a concert of vocal and instrumental music, which the day’s festivities were brought to a close about nine o’clock”.[4]
This new observance continued through the years, without any criticism; temperance and righteousness being the measure of the tradition, however In an editorial in the Morpeth Herald in 1882, a small sign of dissent appeared.
“We are now in the midst of harvest festivals which are being everywhere held in our local district. The wonder, the gratitude, the piety felt towards the Great Author of Nature, when it is brought before us that once more, as it has ever been, the ripening of a few varieties of grass has furnished food for the earth’s teeming millions, insure that there should everywhere be some sort of feast of ingathering or festival. The former method of conducting the harvest feast is fast disappearing, and the old-fashioned ‘kirn’ is being displayed by the more modern parochial festival in which the whole parish generally takes part. One cannot but regret the dissuade of that ancient harvest-supper in which our forefathers revelled. The hospitality of that old fashioned gathering and other similar agricultural feasts, was a bond of union between the farmer and his work people, of inestimable value. The modern harvest festival, as a parochial thanksgiving for the bountities of Providence, is an excellent institution, in addition to the old harvest-feast, but it cannot be considered as a substitute for it.”[5]
In the next part, we will look at the earlier harvest traditions found in Northumberland.