Ryde Social Heritage Group research the social history of the citizens of Ryde, Isle of Wight. Documenting their lives, businesses and burial transcriptions.
RYDE SOCIAL HERITAGE GROUP
Based at Ryde Cemetery Heritage & Learning Centre. Preserving, documenting and promoting the social history of Ryde on the Isle of Wight.
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Why People do not go to Church

The First St Thomas's Church at Ryde

According to the IW Observer 14 January 1922, Mr. Salter of Pondwell knows the reason people do not go to church.

There are various reasons given why people do not go to church, some merely in the shape of excuse, but reading a circular sent us by Mr. Stephen Salter, architect and surveyor, of Pondwell, near Ryde, one is almost forced to the conclusion that bad ventilation of so many places of worship is something to do with it.  Mr. Salter goes so far as to say that the bulk of our places of worship are without any adequate means of ventilation.  A few windows are sometimes opened, with the addition of a door, but no means for exhausting the accumulated foul air exists, the cold air admitted by a few hoppers, etc., in the windows, will not mix with the warm foul air, and drops direct on to the heads of the congregation (like cold water would if thrown into hot), with the result that they rightly ask for windows to be closed.

The science of ventilation is entirely a matter of figures and proper proportion of the extracts to inlets in relation to cubic contents of the building, taking into consideration the kind of heating apparatus employed.  Knocking a hole in the roof and having some inlets from windows is not ventilation.  Very frequently such ill-considered efforts reverse, and cold air comes in where hot air is wanted to go out.

Summed up, Mr. Salter remarks that cleanliness is next to Godliness, if so, the atmosphere in some of our churches is far from that desirable condition.

Source: IW Observer
Image: The first St Thomas’s Church (Tony Gale)