D. H. LAWRENCE was brought up in the Congregational Church in Eastwood. His mother Lydia was a passionate, forceful character, who regularly attended chapel herself, and believed firmly that her children should also be brought up in it. Nonconformist culture at the turn of the twentieth century was such that the chapel often constituted almost all of its members’ social lives, with activities and meetings every night of the week, and for most of each Sunday. Jessie Chambers, Lawrence’s close friend throughout his youth, wrote, ‘The chapel at Eastwood became the centre of our social life.’ In The Lost Girl, Lawrence writes of the novel’s heroine, who grows up in a fictional version of Eastwood:

Lydia Lawrence was ‘deeply religious’, according to Lawrence’s sister Ada, and Jessie too recalls that she and Lawrence ‘regarded our mothers as deeply religious women’. Lydia’s faith was perhaps not entirely orthodox, though, despite her passionate belief in the value of chapel. Jessie recalls her telling her mother that ‘she looked forward more to meeting her son Ernest in heaven than Jesus Christ Himself’. Jessie’s sister May recalls that, when the young Lawrence began a fight with her brothers, Mrs Lawrence urged them to hit him back, telling May’s mother, ‘I believe in retaliation. This “bear and forbear” gospel is too one-sided for me!’ Based on an interview with the daughter of one of the chapel deacons at the time, John Worthen writes, ‘[Lydia] was not […] active in the chapel; the doctrine of self-improvement she found at the Women’s Co-operative Guild at its Monday night meetings was rather more important to her’, and this seems to be true.