Chilvers Coton All Saints Church is a recurring meeting place in Sunday Small’s transition from the workhouse to employment with Biddy Spooner. Sunday attends services there with her new employer, encounters the people she has left behind, and builds connections beyond the parish world that had once contained her life. The church’s importance lies less in architectural description than in the social crossings it makes possible: between workhouse and household, separation and reunion, and private hardship and public community.

Setting and Parish Connections

Biddy Spooner takes Sunday to church by carriage each Sunday morning. Sunday wonders why they attend Chilvers Coton All Saints Church when another church is closer to their home. Annie explains that Biddy and her late husband were born and raised in Coton, married at Chilvers Coton, and continued to attend the church. The husband had attended there too; after his death, Biddy let go of the couple’s pony and trap. Her regular journey therefore continues a shared parish history, even as the carriage now carries Sunday into a wider world than the one she knew at the workhouse.

Sunday’s first arrival with Biddy is marked by the lych-gate. The carriage is less grand than the one in which Lady Lavinia Huntley had brought her to the Spooner household, but Sunday nevertheless feels like royalty as it sets her down at the church. The congregation sees her in a pale, newly altered social role: people look curiously, trying to recognize the girl they had known in workhouse clothes. The entrance thus makes her change visible before she has spoken to anyone.

Services and Encounters

At the church door, Edgar Lockett and his wife greet the congregation. His wife, holding baby Phoebe, draws Sunday aside to ask privately how she is managing in her new position. Sunday says that the work is hard and leaves her little free time, but that life with Biddy is far better than being shut away in the workhouse. Her answer reassures her visitor, while the churchyard setting allows this personal exchange to happen in the midst of a public Sunday gathering.

That morning the workhouse inmates approach in a straight, supervised line, with Miss Frost overseeing them. Sunday searches for Daisy and Tommy and is delighted to see them, but keeps her eyes down rather than risk getting them into trouble by openly greeting them. Their reunion is therefore present but restrained: the church brings the friends into sight of one another, while the rules surrounding the workhouse party prevent an unguarded conversation. Sunday must wait until her visit to them later that afternoon to share her news. Mr Pinnegar also appears with the party, and his attention to Sunday unsettles her even in this new setting.

The service itself is described as lovely: the congregation’s voices echo from the rafters as it sings familiar hymns and listens to Edgar Lockett read. Afterward, the vicar and his wife stand at the door to say goodbye to parishioners. The church’s routine of gathering and greeting contrasts with the workhouse’s rigid supervision, but does not erase the power imbalance that follows Sunday beyond the service.

A Link Between Communities

Attendance at church also becomes a practical part of Sunday’s continuing ties to Daisy and Tommy. On another Sunday, after the service, Edgar Lockett’s wife lets Sunday hold Phoebe briefly. Wrapped in a fine baby shawl given by Lady Lavinia Huntley, the contented child prompts a conversation about the gift and about whether it should be saved for Phoebe’s christening. The moment places Sunday among ordinary family and parish relations, while the shawl connects the Lockett household to Lady Lavinia’s generosity.

Edgar Lockett’s wife then invites Sunday to stay for lunch at the vicarage after the next morning’s service. From there it will be easier for Sunday to reach the workhouse and see Daisy and Tommy, and she will not have to travel home and back again. Sunday welcomes the offer but worries about imposing on Biddy and about leaving the dinner pots; Biddy readily gives permission. The church is thus not merely a setting for reunion. Its services and relationships help make continued visits possible, even while Sunday’s employment imposes claims on her time.

Workhouse Contrast and Significance

The church’s role gains force from the conditions of the workhouse that Sunday has left. Inmates are divided into separate sections for women, boys, girls, and men, and are assigned hard labour; they rarely come together except on Sundays, when they are allowed to attend church. Sunday has witnessed the damage that separation can do to families. Against this background, the weekly service is both a rare point of shared contact and a limited one: the workhouse party remains ordered and supervised, and Sunday cannot freely approach the friends she has come to see.

Later, Sunday tells Lady Lavinia Huntley what life inside the workhouse was like. She describes poor meals and the punishment cellar, where she had once spent three days without food or drink before Edgar Lockett’s wife found her and brought her out weak enough to require a night in the sickbay. Sunday also recounts Cissie Burns’s account of being assaulted by Mr Pinnegar and sent away in the Hatter’s Hall asylum carriage. These revelations are not events at the church, but the church’s parish connections help explain how Sunday comes to have an audience beyond the institution and why her testimony can reach someone able to investigate it.

The church’s social world also offers a contrast to the workhouse’s former atmosphere of fear. After conditions improve there, Verity Lockett reports that meals are better and bullying has ended; the new matron has broken Miss Frost’s split cane and thrown it away. The church remains part of a network through which concern for the workhouse and its residents can continue. Its recurring scenes join worship to practical acts of recognition, contact, and support, without suggesting that a Sunday service alone resolves the hardship beyond its doors.