The history of the Church of England in the nineteenth century has been largely written from the centre, from the perspective of events in Oxford and Cambridge, Lambeth and Westminster, the cathedral close and the episcopal palace. It has tended to dwell on the problems and priorities of the men who were at home in such places. The result is that historians have devoted a great proportion of their energies to a relatively small proportion of the Church. An examination of the thought of prelates, politicians and dons provides a valuable insight into the minds of those in the vanguard of shaping opinion, but it avoids the question of how (or even if) their ideas were assimilated in the country at large.

This book looks at the Church at the parish level in order to reconstruct the religious world of the nineteenth-century Anglican, and to examine the impact that the policies being formulated at the top of the ecclesiastical hierarchy had on the parishioners and clergy of England. Not all change was initiated from above; nor were the laity and parochial clergy passive in their response to it. As is demonstrated by projects to restore churches and to build schools, many plans were brought to fruition locally, with little reference to the Church's hierarchy. This study attempts to recapture something of the varied experience of church people and the clergy who ministered to them, and to consider both the national and local influences to which they were subject.