The Harvest Festival remains an important event for an agricultural area such as Church Lawford and Kings Newnham, celebrated each year with a Church Service – the Parish Newsletter of 1903 records the event over 120 years ago.
Harvest Festival
We celebrated the in-gathering of harvest in St Peter’s Church on the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity, October 4th, and we must not forget to mention that the day was free from rain. Unfortunately so many of our Sundays this year have been exceedingly wet days. The Services at the Festival were well attended, and the congregations heartily joined with the Choir in singing the Harvest Hymns. There was a Children’s Service in the afternoon, when the Rector took for the subject of his address Canticles ii. 1 ”I am the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the valleys.” It is almost needless to say that our Parish Church had been most tastefully decorated by those who have so often undertaken the same congenial work before; indeed, it was remarked that the decorations were unusually effective. And here, perhaps, the word of exhortation is needed. Shall our. Thanksgiving Services merely mean a decorated church, or popular hymns, or even something given to the hospital? Surely there must be more than this! The “General Thanksgiving” Prayer reminds us of our duty – “That we shew forth Thy praise, not only with our lip, but in our lives, by giving up ourselves to Thy service, and by walking before Thee in holiness and righteousness all our days.”
The feeling of gratitude to God should abide with us. throughout the year, and the outcome of that gratitude should be a Godly life. The collections were in behalf of the Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution and of the Rugby HospitaL The amount collected was £4 0s. 5¾d (£1 17s. 3½d. for the Agricultural Benevolent Institution and £2 3s. 2¼ d for the Hospital).
In the late 1950’s the Harvest Festival also included a Harvest Supper which was organised by St Peter’s Church for the two villages. The village magazines of 1959 reported before and after that year’s event.
By 1985 there was a third event included in the festivities – as detailed in the report in the November 1985 parish magazine
HARVEST FESTIVALS
The Harvest Festival Supper in the Reading Room on Friday, 27 September was a tremendous success. It was agreed that proceeds from the event should be donated to a fund to
help those unfortunate people in Mexico who had lost so much during the recent earthquake. Before the festivities ended, the Rev Giller proposed a vote of thanks to the ladies of the church who had prepared and served such a wonderful spread.
The Harvest Festival Thanksgiving Service was held on Sunday 29 September in St Peter’s Church, which was filled with the bounties of harvest time- and beautifully decorated with flowers. The next day much of the produce was taken to St Luke’s Hospital in Rugby.
On Wednesday 9 October, Church Lawford C of E First School held its’ Harvest Festival Service. Produce was on sale with teachers and mothers helping at the stalls. The proceeds of this event are to be donated to help famine relief in Ethiopia.
In more recent years the distribution of produce has been to retired folk in the village, with the Harvest Festival Services as important as ever – referenced in this report of the event in the Year 2000.
