Welsh Journals

How to Write a Church History David Walker My commission today is to talk about 'How to write a church history'.1 Every church should have some kind of history or hand- book available. The older the church, or the more remarkable its contents, the more obvious the need. In these days when so many tourists and visitors are likely to look in, there should be something to tell them what they are looking at. It might be a simple printed leaflet, like the useful one issued for Llananno, an isolated Radnorshire church with a splendid fifteenth-century, or early sixteenth-century, screen and rood loft. There, a photograph and two pages of print is quite sufficient to meet the needs of the majority of visitors. At Partrishow, the Brecknockshire hill church with another fine screen and loft-this time in a building of much greater antiquity-a stencilled sheet serves the same purpose. To go to the other extreme, a church of outstanding quality might produce, not only a substantial history, but a lavish pictorial record. Bath Abbey or Tewkesbury Abbey, to take two of many examples, can profitably be presented in full technicolour!3 It would be a laudable undertaking for the historical societies of this area to see that every church has some hand-out, however brief, to offer visitors. Some English dioceses have gone so far as to adopt a standard form for parish histories. When Canon Gwynfryn Roberts produced a history of St. Mary and All Saints, Conway, he 'followed a pattern evolved by Mr. Walter H. Godfrey F.S.A., for use in the Dioceses of Chichester and Oxford'.4 It is an open question whether this system is entirely to be recommended. True, it is a form of protection against rampant amateurism, a disease inherent in the genre, but uniformity of pattern may not suit either churches or authors. I prefer the variety of approach which enables individual writers to make their own contributions to local studies and to follow their own independent lines of enquiry. I take it that we are concerned with the problems which have to be faced in any serious attempt to write the history of a parish church, and that the purpose of this discussion today is to look at