Church Hymns

Church Hymns (1871), Church Hymns with Tunes (1874). The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) had printed hymns since 1837, when it added them to a reprint of Tate* and Brady*’s Metrical Psalms, the New Version*. In subsequent editions, more hymns were added, and then printed separately from the Psalms in 1852. Psalms and Hymns for Public Worship followed in 1855, with an Appendix in 1863, edited by Berdmore Compton, then rector of Barford, Warwickshire. Some churches, such as St Barnabas, Kennington, had produced their own supplement to it. John Ellerton* thought that ‘the character of too many of the hymns… is certainly a rather dull and characterless mediocrity’ (Housman,...