A Village Feast Day Needs You

SPONSOR A CENTURIES-OLD ENGLISH TRADITION

How you could sponsor a festival in an English village for £500 and be invited to it yourself

Last year there was a widespread revival of patronal festivals in Anglican parish churches in England and Wales centred on the service of choral evensong. Eighty churches celebrated the feast day of their patron saint or feast of title. These festivals were very successful, with a renewed sense of local community. I wrote about this project in a previous Substack essay.

The festivals were facilitated by grants from the Choral Evensong Trust, of which I am a trustee: a £500 grant helped cover the cost of a visiting choir to sing choral evensong, followed by a reception with free food and drink and other festivities, including bell-ringing, village fêtes and children’s activities.

These one-off grants were made not simply to fund an isolated event, but to help churches establish a tradition they could sustain locally in subsequent years. Encouragingly, most parishes who participated in 2025 are planning to continue their patronal festivals annually, funding it through local giving and support.

In England, but not in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, there is still an ancient system whereby each church has a Patron, a person or institution who has a special relationship with the church. Some patronages date back to the medieval period. In 453 parishes the Patron is the King, in others the local landowner, usually an aristocrat like a Duke, Marquis or Earl, who role is hereditary, in some an Oxford or Cambridge college, in some a Bishop or other ecclesiastical body, in some a City of London livery company, like the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, and in some a committee.

This year the Choral Evensong Trust has had 115 applications, 45% more than last year, and is unable to fund them all from its limited resources and has therefore asked the Patrons of English churches to help fund the patronal festivals in churches under their patronage. Some have been happy to do so, including the King, the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey, the Duke of Rutland, the Earl of Plymouth, Eton College and the Goldsmiths Company. Others have been unable to help, usually because they have insufficient funds or no provision for making grants.

The result is that about 50 parishes remain unfunded, scattered throughout the country, including one in Cornwall, one in Dorset, two in Yorkshire, two in Somerset, one in Warwickshire, two in Lincolnshire, four in Herefordshire, one in Staffordshire, two in Gloucestershire, one in Liverpool, one in South London, one in Kent, one in Hampshire, four in Nottinghamshire, and one in Cambridgeshire. Fortunately, the Scottish and Northern Irish festivals have been funded through the generosity of Eton College, and the Welsh festivals through a charitable trust based in South Wales, the Baroness Windsor Fund.

If you would like to support one or more parishes, as I have done myself, it’s quite easy to do, and if you live in the UK, your donation will be increased by 25% if you are eligible for Gift Aid- in other words, if you are a UK taxpayer. You can donate through this portal using a credit or debit card, and also add Gift Aid if applicable.

Unless you prefer to remain anonymous, we will tell parishes you support that you have sponsored them and ask them to invite you to their festivals. I went to several myself last year and they were joyful and heartwarming occasions. For £500 you can support one parish, for £1,000 two, for £2,000 four and so on.

This is one of the most cost-effective ways in which you can make a real difference to a community, with effects that may continue for years. And it’s a great way to commemorate a loved one. If you do not live in England but have English ancestry, you can reconnect with your roots by helping support one or more parish festivals and be invited to attend them. Even if you cannot go, you will feel included.

If you have made a donation and have a preference for a particular region of England, please email me at sheldrake@sheldrake.org and we will try to match you up with a parish or parishes in that area.

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The Choral Evensong Trust is a UK Registered Charity (number 1190208) and more details can be found on their website.

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I hope the essays and talks I share through Substack will help to stimulate fresh thinking and encourage a more holistic approach to science. However, this is by no means my full-time job. I am mainly engaged in scientific research across several fronts, some of which I have yet to discuss publicly, and I regularly publish in peer-reviewed scientific journals (see the Research section in sheldrake.org for details). I also summarise my research findings in an ongoing series of videos called Findings, which I publish here on Substack.

Traditional funding institutions are reluctant to pay for these kinds of exploration, so the generosity of people who support my work makes this research possible. But if you can’t contribute financially, don’t worry. I am happy to share ideas, and much of my content will remain free and open-access.

Rupert Sheldrake