The theme of this year’s Heritage Open Days is ‘Edible England’ and Top Church in Dudley is embracing this with a day of activities all around bread!
Communities Minister at the Church, Kath Poole, said: “We discovered that among many charities based in Top Church over the years, there was a charity which used to provide bread for widows and others in poverty in the town. The charity was started in 1679 and we know that it was still going in 1900 when records show that eight loaves of bread were given to people who needed it each Sunday.”
Top Church will be open from 11am until 3pm this Saturday, 18 September with a range of activities on the theme of ‘brilliant bread’. There are children’s activities, a bread baking workshop, and a chance to find out about bread from the past and its importance to different cultures.
“Bread has huge significance in Christianity but is also common across all cultures,” continued Kath. “We’ll be re-creating the eight loaves given out by Top Church in 1900 but using bread from the cultures of different people connected with our church. This will include soda bread from Ireland, Nigerian and Iranian bread and chapattis from Bangladesh. We’ll tell some of the history of these people and their cultures.”
There will also be a huge map of Dudley as it was in 1900 across the Nave of the church, which people will be able to walk down and explore. Volunteers will be dressed as characters from the high street at the time.
“We’ve researched different people who would have lived in the high street in 1900. The person running our bread workshop will be dressed as the local baker and at the refreshments table will be someone dressed as the landlady of the pub opposite the church which was destroyed in the war. We want to tell the stories of the people of Dudley using food as something we all have in common. By talking about people involved in the church both past and present, we hope that visitors will think about their own stories,” said Kath.
Alongside the activities related to bread, there will also be the chance to take a tour of the Top Church crypt. Booking isn’t essential to attend the event, but space at the bread baking workshop and crypt tours are limited and should be pre-booked to avoid disappointment.