As with most traditions in the UK, Mothering Sunday has its roots in religion. As far back as the 1500s, people would return to their local ‘mother church’ on the fourth Sunday of Lent for a special service, a practice that became known as going “a-mothering.” On their way to church they would walk the lanes and pick wildflowers from the hedgerows to give to their mothers and to decorate the church.
It is easy to look back at these dates and traditions as just history. But I am always fascinated by what the people were like back then, and how they would have picked and arranged their flowers. I like to think they took real care over it, choosing the best stems and thinking about what to put together.
Talking about this with my own mother she recently mentioned how her mother, my grandmother Olive Harford, used to do the same thing. My grandmother left Bristol in 1939 to join the Women’s Land Army in Devon and fell in love with the area and never went back.
Women’s Land Army workers harvesting oats at Mount Barton, Devon, 1942. Young women like my grandmother Olive came from cities across Britain to work the Devon land and many, like her, never left.
Every Mothering Sunday Olive would walk the lanes around Black Dog and pick a handful of primroses from the hedgerows. My mother told me the primroses back then had longer stems and there were so many more of them. She would pack them carefully in a box with a scrap of damp cotton to keep them fresh and post them home to her mother in Bristol.
It is a simple story but it touched me when I heard it. The idea of a young woman far from home, walking a Devon lane in the early spring, picking flowers to send to her mother. The same lanes, the same flowers, the same time of year.
Those hedgerow primroses are still there today but we are no longer allowed to pick wildflowers in the UK, so Olive’s tradition belongs to a different time. But the spirit of it does not have to be lost.
The countryside around Black Dog looks much the same today as it did when Olive walked these lanes in the 1940s, and just as they did then, the first primroses and narcissi are coming through along the banks.
This year for Mothering Sunday we are keeping things simple. We have our narcissi and spring bulbs ready at the farm, the same hardy golden, cream and white flowers that have been brought into Devon homes for centuries.
If you would like some of our local blooms, we will be at the Tiverton Pannier Market with our narcissi and bulbs. We hope to see you there.
