ABSTRACT
The suburbs were proverbially the home of the middle class but the suburban way of life was shared by some of the working class and some of the gentry. The middle-class suburbs extended far in social range from the wealth of Blackheath or Putney to the Battersea of Richard Church's parents with their artisan and lower middle-class neighbours. Even in London, where middle-class families were less conspicuous and less subject to social pressures than in the village or small town. Suburban preacher with a wider reputation was the Congregationalist, Campbell Morgan, though his church in Upper Holloway was perhaps far more exclusively a preaching centre than, say, Horton's in Hampstead, with its large apparatus of attached organisations. The sermon was the most characteristic feature of the Victorian Sunday. The content of upper middle-class religion varied widely, but the external forms were uniform: family prayers, regular attendance at church, and the adoption of a distinctive pattern of behaviour on Sunday.
