Rushbearing & Rush Strewing in Churches across the Northern Counties

Rushbearing & Rush Strewing in Churches across the Northern Counties Garry Stringfellow. Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire: Garry Stringfellow, in conjunction with Northern Earth, 2018. vi + 185 pp. Illustrations. Map. Bibliography. ISBN 978-0-948635-11-3 (hardback). £15.00.

The full title of this volume is Rushbearing & Rush Strewing in Churches across the Northern Counties: Being a history of the custom, an account of its various elements and a gazetteer of the churches and locations where it was formerly or is currently to be found. In many ways, Stringfellow's book does exactly what is says on the tin: a brief history chapter is followed by an overview of various features that constituted or accompanied the custom, though by far the bulk of the volume details accounts of rushbearing and rush strewing in an A-Z gazetteer of over 170 locations across north Wales, Cheshire, Lancashire, Derbyshire, West Yorkshire, and into Cumbria. A final section lists incidences of similar customs found elsewhere in England.

There is no doubt that this has been a labour of love for the author. Garry Stringfellow, a retired teacher from Calderdale, has long had a strong interest in local history and traditions, leading him to join the Colne Royal Morris Men and to revive the Sowerby Bridge rushcart in 1977. A previous volume, Rushes and...