Made with love
Country Life UK|December 13 - 20, 2023 (Double Issue)
We might not give them a second thought when we kneel down to pray in church, but the humble hassock offers comfort, as well as embroidered and elaborate beauty, says the Revd Colin Heber-Percy
Colin Heber-Percy
Made with love

GO into any church and chances are you'll find, hanging from hooks behind the pews, colour-fully embroidered kneelers or hassocks. Many will be patterned with familiar Biblical motifs-a dove, a cross, a cup and so on. Some may have heraldic or royal insignia; others might be considerably more eccentric. In her wonderful new book, Kneelers: The Unsung Folk Art of England and Wales, Elizabeth Bingham offers illustrations of kneelers depicting a de Havilland DH 108 jet aeroplane, a stethoscope, beach huts, the Sizewell nuclear-power station and an oil rig.

Despite the kneelers' richness and diversity, we tend to overlook these often anonymous examples of skill, imagination and pride in community. Instead, we raise our eyes to the stained glass or the spire or the vaulting. The direction of our gaze is illustrative. Whether we've entered the church for devotional reasons or simply out of interest, we are all heirs of a prevailing view that encourages us to look up and to think, to reflect, to use our minds (and our guidebooks), rather than our bodies.

However, unlike the decorated windows or the architectural flourishes or the memorial tablets, these kneelers aren't for looking at (or not merely for looking at): they are useful. The kneelers modestly tucked under the pews are a reminder that we're in the church not only as enquiring minds, but as living bodies, with flesh and blood and creaking knee joints. These days, we're encouraged to 'read' a church as we would a text. Richard Taylor's 2003 book How to Read a Church makes no mention of kneelers in all of its nearly 300 pages.

Esta historia es de la edición December 13 - 20, 2023 (Double Issue) de Country Life UK.

Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.

Esta historia es de la edición December 13 - 20, 2023 (Double Issue) de Country Life UK.

Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.

MÁS HISTORIAS DE COUNTRY LIFE UKVer todo
Save our family farms
Country Life UK

Save our family farms

IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.

time-read
1 min  |
November 27, 2024
A very good dog
Country Life UK

A very good dog

THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.

time-read
1 min  |
November 27, 2024
The great astral sneeze
Country Life UK

The great astral sneeze

Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why

time-read
3 minutos  |
November 27, 2024
'What a good boy am I'
Country Life UK

'What a good boy am I'

We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton

time-read
3 minutos  |
November 27, 2024
Forever a chorister
Country Life UK

Forever a chorister

The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death

time-read
4 minutos  |
November 27, 2024
Best of British
Country Life UK

Best of British

In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.

time-read
3 minutos  |
November 27, 2024
Old habits die hard
Country Life UK

Old habits die hard

Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves

time-read
4 minutos  |
November 27, 2024
It takes the biscuit
Country Life UK

It takes the biscuit

Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them

time-read
3 minutos  |
November 27, 2024
It's always darkest before the dawn
Country Life UK

It's always darkest before the dawn

After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat

time-read
4 minutos  |
November 27, 2024
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
Country Life UK

Tarrying in the mulberry shade

On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.

time-read
3 minutos  |
November 27, 2024