Our churches have long been used for local festivals and entertainments. The same is still true today, with the flower festival in St Mary’s and St James during the first weekend of September and, at the end of the month, the harvest festivals.

At one time the beginning of the harvest, Lammas tide on 1st August, used more to be celebrated than its end. Lammas means 'loaf Mass'. Loaves of bread made from the fresh wheat crop were given to the local church as the Communion bread during a special service thanking God for the first fruits and no doubt asking for His blessing on getting in the rest.

Nowadays it is more traditional to celebrate the end of harvest. This is much more in keeping with the original meaning of the word “harvest” which comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for "autumn". It then came to refer to the season for reaping and gathering grain and other grown products. The full moon, which falls in the month of September, is called the harvest moon. Rising soon after sunset, it gives extra light to the shortening days of autumn, and must have been especially welcome in past times to those coming home after a long day’s harvesting in the fields. The waning of the harvest moon therefore marked the time when harvesting should be over so celebrations were traditionally held on the Sunday following the harvest moon.

In the middle ages this would most likely have been declared a Holy Day (holiday), when no one worked and attendance at mass was obligatory. Afterwards the celebration became a more boisterous affair: there would have been food, a “church ale” specially brewed for the occasion, and music, singing and dancing in the church and the churchyard. The drinking often led to excesses, and gradually during the agricultural revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries these feasts were replaced with the harvest supper on the evening before the church service, and more likely held away from the church in the manor hall or farm.

The modern British tradition of celebrating Harvest Festival in churches began in 1843, when the Reverend Robert Hawker invited parishioners to a special thanksgiving service at his church at Morwenstow in Cornwall. Victorian hymns such as "We plough the fields and scatter", "Come ye thankful people, come" and "All things bright and beautiful" helped popularise his idea of harvest festival and spread the annual custom of decorating churches with home-grown produce for the Harvest Festival service, a custom which we continue to this day.

The Friends of St. Mary’s and St. James’ is a registered charity dedicated to maintaining the fabric, fixtures and fittings of the two churches in our parish.