Parish magazine
It usually comprises a mixture of religious articles, community contributions, and parish notices, including the previous month‘s christenings, marriages, and funerals.
From their earliest days they have frequently been augmented by the inclusion of a nationally-produced magazine supplement or a regionally produced insert, such as a diocesan news leaflet or similar publication (and sometimes they might include both).
Sometimes groups of parishes - possibly based on a rural deanery - would reduce overall costs by working together to produce a corporate magazine, with contributions from each village.
With the growth of inter-church cooperation after the Second World War, other magazines became ecumenical and were jointly published in association with local Methodist, United Reformed or Roman Catholic congregations.
In January 2014 the Daily Telegraph reported on the imminent closure of the Haworth Parish Magazine – allegedly one of the oldest in continuous existence – after 115 years.
The newspaper suggested that many similar publications were on the verge of extinction in their traditional form – victims of the digital age and the increasing use of parish websites or online social networking.
[13] Parish magazines, being frequently produced by largely untrained volunteers with often variable talents, have always been likely to be uneven in quality.
In 1949 the Church Assembly (the forerunner of the Church of England General Synod) published a book Better Parish Magazines and How to Produce Them,[15] with the Bishop of London William Wand commenting in the foreword: One of the most encouraging signs of the times for ecclesiastical administrators is the very rapid improvement that is taking place in the quality of our parish magazines.
[17] Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams has stated: “A good parish magazine is a wonderful resource that places the local church at the heart of the community it serves".
Incidentally, the same list concluded by making especially favourable reference to The Anvil, not a parish magazine but reaching an increasing number of readers all over the country.
One reviewer commented: "Every page looks exactly like a tatty church magazine, written with extensive use of a plastic stencil and an ancient typewriter, complete with terrible drawings and tacky-looking adverts".
During the 19th and early 20th centuries quite a few individual parishes or subscribers had their annual sets of magazines bound up each year (with or without the national insets) and this has undoubtedly assisted in their survival.
A number of examples may be traced via the online catalogues of individual county record offices, or via the Access to Archives website.
[23] In recent years a small number of very early parish magazines have been reprinted in facsimile – either as curiosities or as a contribution towards the study of social history within their local area.
