An Edwardian Sunday School Photograph

Submitted by Alan Marsden on Mon, 06/05/2024 - 00:00

A curious old picture hangs in our chapel vestry, at least it did until its string snapped and down it fell. Its glass cover is long gone, and it is badly scratched, with one area ripped away, possibly removing one individual from the image. Otherwise, it records 48 men, women and children. It appears to be a picture of the Sunday School with its teachers, and maybe the minister and his wife, along with the deacons.

Based on the fashion, I date it to 1910: ladies tie up their hair, while some gentlemen don wing collars; a couple of older people wear the fashions of the 1880s or 90s while the little lads wear the large, white collars which were then popular, a brief throwback to the puritan era.

The photograph was taken in a section of the field at the back, which was later purchased to expand the graveyard. The upper room is visible on the right which was constructed in 1908. So large a wall looming over the subjects’ heads is usually to be avoided, but I think the photographer wanted to include ‘the new Sunday School’ as it was then called.

I suspect that the older couple, seated at the centre, are the Rev and Mrs W H Duerden (1898 -1913), with the deacons and other officeholders on the back row, as well as the Sunday School teachers, which I imagine was the role of the young women wearing formal white shirts on the second-to-back row. One is struck by how smart they all are. For a formal photograph they would of course be inclined to dress up, though I imagine that the Edwardians wore their Sunday best each Sunday anyway. Because of their uniform smartness, it is difficult to determine the social background of any.

There are 20 boys and 13 girls, which may not be remarkable. Apart from two young women whom I take to be teachers, there are no teenagers present. This might be because they were deemed too old to attend a Sunday School, or because, like now, teenagers tend to leave church, so a congregation is typically made up of children and older people.

I crudely estimate that only five of the males would have been old or young enough to have fought in the Great War (assuming it was not taken in 1914, in which case the number falls to three). It is likely that scores of their great-grandchildren still live in Rimington to this day. Our oldest member came to Salem Chapel in the mid-1940s, and would likely have recognised some of these people if they were still present in the 1950s and 60s. Otherwise, apart from the pastor, they remain anonymous, unrecognised and obscure, features of a tatty but interesting relic from a century ago. They are no better off than the little girl on the front row who decided to turn around and look at her neighbours the very moment the picture was taken.

If they remembered their lessons, and believed what they were taught, I shall meet them one day, in a fairer place than that back field, in a more interesting location than an Edwardian country chapel.