The coldest place
that our ancestors were forced to regularly frequent was probably the local
church – where sometimes ice laced the font and the earth outside was too hard to allow for burials. Members of the congregation would
dress warmly and take rugs, blankets and even dogs to help keep warm during
long sermons.
On Saturday November 25th 1865, a correspondent to the Westmorland Gazette and Kendal Advertiser complained: ‘We know that some people have attributed their own severe cold to a chill caught in church. The season has not been a healthy one, and there is no need to aggravate prevalent sickness by any cause so obviously likely to cause shocks to health, and especially to what is called feeble health, as the damp, cold atmosphere which must prevail in a large church without a fire in such a month as this.’
St Peter's Church, Elmsett Suffolk, 2010. Wikimedia Commons
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