Religious architecture shows that mass communications are not only a modern-day purview, and continues to provide spaces for humans to connect, argues Eleanor Young
Will you think me old-fashioned if I write about churches? Well, you shouldn’t.
They were way ahead of television or social media, setting up mass communications in the Middle Ages, broadcasting values and summons to parishioners, far more effective – if a little less nuanced – than a town crier. And when mechanical clocks came along, they added another application – timekeeping.
Having been brought up in the country and in the Church of England, the bells used to mean to me the beginning of a rather slow, cold, hour of Sunday service punctuated by the keep-fit routine: kneel to pray, stand to sing, ‘please be seated’ to listen; and repeat.
Now I hear drifts of the bells from across the valley with the same pleasure and nostalgia I usually reserve for trees and landscape views. Churches are havens of free indoor space in villages, galleries of gilded crosses and stained glass in every town, concert halls in the city, hymns to carpenters and craftspeople – and a testament to the power of architecture wherever you see them.
They are redolent with history and tradition, even where other traditions may have had more vigour in chapels and mosques.
Churches are havens of free indoor space – and a testament to the power of architecture wherever you see them
Church buildings celebrated and glorified the Almighty, and brought people to worship for centuries. They were not, however, enough to keep the majority of the population attending them each Sunday.
But there is continuity for the passer-by, spying a stone tower rising up from the yew tree at a bend in the road, breathing in the space around them in the city, connecting with the history as you cut past their iron railings and old walls.
We rarely get a chance to celebrate quinquennial inspections of churches by architects. But these, and countless small interventions to allow a warmer welcome accompanied by coffee and a toilet, are the things that enable church buildings not just to survive in our landscape but to reach out a hand to the society around them.
The National Churches Trust commissioned independent analysis, which in 2024 estimated that churches of all denominations relieve costs and support the NHS to the tune of £8.4 billion a year. It enumerated the value of warm spaces held in churches, food banks, the hosting of AA groups, parents’ and toddlers’ meetings, and more.
The best of the values built into the ancient walls of churches persist – and are part of the fabric of our society. They don’t merely broadcast; they create a home for connections between people, working against the forces of loneliness and isolation.