ABSTRACT
The English parish church is part and parcel of the cultural furniture of the nation. To some it is ‘more than a place of denominational worship. It is the stage on which the pageant of the community has been played out for a millennium’ (Jenkins 1999:3). For others it is the natural focus of the community, ‘markers and anchors . . . repositories of all embracing meanings pointing beyond the immediate to the ultimate . . . [the] only institutions that deal in tears and concern themselves with the breaking points of human existence’ (Davie 1994:189). Still for others, the parish church is a place of Christian witness within a defined community. It is the ekklesia of the parochia (Pounds 2000:37-40); the means of spiritual sustenance, ethical endeavour and social shaping within a given community that becomes ‘the social skin of the world . . . always laid out in particular ways, ordered in such a way as to be suitable for its place’ (Hardy 1996:27).
