Clapham Village Newsletter, June/July 2025 [PDF download]
“The coming of summer ushered in not merely a season in which the flowering of nature led minds naturally to rejoicing, but one in which the clemency of the air made the implementation of that desire most practicable,” writes historian Ronald Hutton in The Stations of the Sun. “It was therefore in that period that the people of pre-industrial England gave themselves up to communal merry-making with particular frequency, a tendency reinforced by the fact that it lay conveniently between the heavy work of ploughing and sowing, and that of hay-making.” The Church played its part in these festive gatherings, often known as ‘ales’, by authorising a Whitsun holiday, and in time inaugurating occasions known as ‘Church Ales’. These were not so much ‘Church in the Pub’, but rather ‘Pub in the Church’, or more accurately, ‘Pub just outside the Church’, for (as Hutton writes) “there were always scruples about putting a sacred building to secular use, especially that which might conduce to inebriation and irreverence.” But hosting an ‘ale’ in the church grounds – and using it as an occasion for parish fundraising – was a way of avoiding episcopal censure, and even courting the bishops’ approval.
So when the good folk of St Matthew’s Church, Keasden decided to host a Beer and Hymns evening on 22 June this year, we found ourselves falling into a longstanding British tradition of ‘Church Ales’, the sacred and the secular coming together in festivity. A contemporary inspiration for this, for me, is the Beer & Hymns events held throughout each August Bank Holiday weekend at Greenbelt, a music and arts festival with Christian roots and a broad reach held in the English countryside (its current home is Boughton, an estate of 11,000 acres in Northamptonshire, and a seat of Richard Montagu Douglas Scott, 10th Duke of Buccleuch and 12th Duke of Queensberry). Beer & Hymns started life at the Greenbelt Festival in 2006. Led by Tim ‘the stout but not fat Landlord’ Fox, with Dave ‘Monkey Boy’ Ball on the piano, and ‘Adorable’ Hannah assisting on the mic, festival goers were invited to raise their pints and sing some hymns. “The rest is history,” they write, at www.beerandhymns.org, and continue:
“Dave and Tim used to take groups of young homeless people, families, staff and volunteers from their local YMCA for weekend retreats. One evening over a beer, after running out of Beatles songs, they started singing classic hymns and discovered that people of all ages, creeds, colours and beliefs enjoyed immensely the singing of the great old Wesley tunes and the majestic words that went with them. Some years later, Tim was asked if he would consider running the Organic Beer Tent at Greenbelt, and determined the drinking of beer and singing of hymns would be a great addition to the life of the pub, which was renamed as The Jesus Arms. On the first evening, with just a small piano, no hymn sheets and the first few bars of And Can It Be they were joined by over five hundred people: singing their hearts out and raising glasses in the hostelry. On that day Beer & Hymns was truly born.”
Our June evening will no doubt be a more modest occasion, but we’ll gather, pint in one hand and hymn sheet in the other, in the spirit of the olde-English parish festival-goers and those who today make their annual pilgrimage to The Jesus Arms, to share a sup, a song, and a few good smiles.
Ronald Hutton writes that “In the mid-thirteenth century, bishops orders repeatedly forbade the attendance at ‘ales’ of clergy (who might compromise their dignity at such events).” Beer and Hymns, Keasden Church, 7.00pm on Sunday 22nd June – I’m prepared to take a chance.
