St Beuno's Church, Pistyll

St Beuno's Church at Pistyll in North Wales is an ancient little structure. As well boasting a ‘Norman’ font and some remaining traces of medieval wall paintings, this remote chapel also maintains another ancient tradition: the laying of rushes and herbs upon its floor. They are re-laid each Christmas, Easter and August, and when I called last month, they still looked and smelled fresh. ‘Rushbearing’ is an ancient practice which was once common in medieval Britain. Earthen floors were made pleasanter and the smells generated by constant use thereby improved. It felt a little odd to my Adidas-shod feet walking over such a carpet, but I enjoyed the novelty and savoured the smell.

On account of the traditional Rushbearing events generally attracting drunkenness and undesirable characters from other parishes (combined with parish communities paying to have their church floors paved) the practice slowly died out. Industrial Lancashire seems to have preserved it longer, perhaps as a way of its workers wishing to retain memories of their rural childhoods. Why it survived on this remote, Welsh peninsular I cannot say, though I am glad that it did.

Rushbearing and carpet-laying are not major themes in scripture. I suspect that living in tents like the patriarchs, rugs were taken for granted, while those living in urban houses may have felt no need, the dry climate seldom causing one to ‘traipse mud in’. We read of coverings for beds, curtains and clothing. In contrast, Welshmen and Englishmen required rushes because of the damp soil and the smells which would inevitably accumulate in a place of communal gatherings when few people  bothered to wash or infrequently changed clothes. Song of Solomon (5:13) extols the Lover’s sweet smell, however:

His cheeks are like a bed of spices, banks of scented herbs. His lips are lilies, dripping liquid myrrh.

St Beuno’s sweet(er) smelling floors would not be disdained in the economy of God; our places of worship do not need to be luxuriously decorated, but they ought to be clean, and sweet-smelling.