Church Services.

The Church Services at Sonning and at All Saints will be the same as in previous months.

WOODLEY SCHOOL.

There will be a Sale of children's clothes at the Woodley Schoolroom, on Wednesday, October 27th, from 1 to 4 o'clock. Open to all in the parish.

HERRINGS.

If any readers of the Sonning Magazine think that salt herrings are too vulgar to make a subject for a paper, let them go to a fishing village such as Stonehaven on the East coast of Scotland, where they will see such things as are now to be described, and will ever afterwards eat that fish with an appetite, seasoned by respect. At Stonehaven, there is a colony which has existed, unchanged, for hundreds of years; grand looking men, tall, strong, and handsome, picturesque in their dress of dark blue or sometimes of orange yellow, with red caps on their heads and big jack boots on their legs; brown-burnt, bright-eyed women, with the prettiest Spanish-like children, a happy healthy community, who, strange to say, confine their marriages to their own village, all kith and kin, in spite of the usual predictions of people, who forget that the marriages of cousins turn out ill because the pairs are puny or stupid, not because they are cousins. These people are all fisherfolk, and their long holding of the place is testified by their religion, for many of them are of our Church, tracing their descent from the Episcopalian times of Scotland, and the chapel is well filled with a hearty congregation worshipping under the same forms as ours at Sonning, so unlike the Presbyterian services. Their ritual is high in so far that they make their music and ornaments as attractive as their small means will allow, otherwise there is no difference in life or teaching between the old religion and the Scotch Establishment; all are equally strict Sabbatarians, not only doing no work on Sunday, but forbidding all cheerfulness or holiday, except in respect of a large Sunday meal. About sun-down, each day, the men go out, for their best time to catch the fish is at night; it is a beautiful sight to watch the boats, two or three score, gliding from the harbour in a long line, the sea all purple in the evening light, and the one brown sail hanging lankily from each ship's mast; they look like ghosts or some mysterious things, when they move out with scarcely any wind, and the only noise is the light splashing of the oars with which four out their usual crew of six, pull out till they catch the breeze beyond some rocky point. What the night brings forth is known in the morning; while the men at sea are toiling, the women at home are sleeping, if they can, oftener perhaps waking and weeping, if "the harbour bar be moaning" in the roughness of the night, or if their purse is low and the future not quite clear. The risks of this fishers' life are many and great, the sight of the terrible coast where Stonehaven is

the only refuge for many miles is enough to frighten other men; no ship could last against those rocks on which the sea dashes, breaking into caves and creeks, without a beach, and fathomless under the very wall of the country, nor are the little herring boats fitted to live in any storm; besides, the fish so busily hunted is a shocking flirt, one night thronging this boat, one night that, often filling a boat till she almost sinks, while a jealous neighbour, ten yards off, gets not one fin; sometimes day after day the fleet returns to shore without a fair haul, hard though the men have worked, and drearily they go to rest, while their wives repair the nets or bait with muscles the long lines with which they try for other fish, as haddocks, codlings, and all that are in season. Again perhaps the coast is visited by the long wished for shoals, and if the weather is fine, no cheerier or more bustling scene does honour to the industry of man; the boats come racing in, dashing up the spray before their bows, deep sunk astern, a sign to the glad wife that her husband has a right good take at last. The ships are bound to yield their cargo to merchants who bargain for the season to have all from the crews by weight at certain prices; these buyers stand on the quays seeing after their dues, and when the sailors have settled with them, and shaken the shining fishes from their nets, their part is done, and they go home tired but contented, to rest till the evening brings their work round again. Now is the hard work for the women; pans, baskets, wheelbarrows, and carts, are all enlisted to carry the myriads of herrings to the curing or salting places; there they are seized with the eagerness of workers who are paid, not by the time, but by the piece, and the hurry and the scramble that ensues is hardly kept within bounds by a cold hearted overseer, who saves many a herring from being torn in pieces by the girls, and checks the language and ill temper which such excitement. is apt to raise, especially in fish markets, as the proverbial name of Billingsgate can prove. The work is this: first the herring is cleaned, that is, cut down the middle with one stroke, gutted with a second, and thrown at once into a cran or basket, so that each fish is done for so far in the time of saying one, two, three; the basket when full is carried to a little distance, where each woman has two barrels standing, one full of salt, the other empty; the woman then sprinkles salt in the bottom of the empty cask, and after salting each fish with a handful in its belly, she fills up her barrel tight, with alternate layers of herrings and salt; this done, she gets for so much work seven-pence, and therefore fills as many barrels as she can in the day and while her strength holds out. The business only halts when a meal of bread and butter and beer is served out to the workers in the place, at the expense of the merchant, who is bound on the terms of their wages so to do. All that now remains is for men to nail tops on the barrels and cart them off either to ships which take quantities to Germany, or to the station, whence they are taken to Aberdeen. And what their history may be after that it is hard to say; but if a salt herring appears in Sonning, let it be eaten not without reflecting that that herring has been sent at the cost of labour, hard and little paid, of sleepless nights, at the risk of lives of men, sent by a people who are well content with toils and hardships quite unknown inland, who brave such dangers as can scarcely be conceived by those who dwell among the fields, seeking for their living in the waves without a fear, because they trust in God.

K. M. M.

ALL SAINTS' SCHOOL.

The All Saints' School, which for some months has been in the hands of workmen, was re-opened on Monday, September 20th. The Schoolroom has been enlarged to fully twice its former size; a new entrance lobby has been added, a lavatory built, and many smaller alterations made; everything has in fact been done to make the School thoroughly comfortable and convenient. The whole expense has been borne by the Miss Palmers, Holme Park. We hope the New School will soon be full of scholars.

CRICKET.

The following Matches have been played between Sonning and the neighbouring Clubs :

SONNING v. TILEHURST.

Played at Tilehurst, on Wednesday, August 18th.

SONNING v. HURST.-Played at Sonning, on Friday, August 26th. HURST, first innings, 59; second innings, 91, with four wickets to fall. SONNING, first innings, 114.

SONNING 7. READING TRADESMEN.-Played at Sonning, on Thursday, September 2nd. SONNING, first innings, 175. READING TRADESMEN, first innings, 78; second innings, 46.

SONNING 7. HURST.-Played at Hurst, on Wednesday, September 22nd. Hurst, 34 and 73; Sonning, 32 and 49.

ST. ANDREW'S CHURCH, SONNING.

VIII.

Before proceeding to describe the refitting of the Church, something must be said about the Tower. A careful inspection of it both inside and out confirms the view we have already taken, that the present structure was built with the remains of some much earlier and more beautiful buildings. There are several moulded stones to be seen in the upper parts of the interior, in addition to those on the outside mentioned before. The date of its erection can hardly be earlier than the Reformation. The lower windows and the Western doorway are in a better style than the belfry windows. These are in fact much later and more debased, and I think they must have been inserted subsequently to the building of the Tower itself. There was probably no Western Tower, originally, if the Church, as we believe, extended further Westwards, but the whole fabric must have been so changed when the North side was re-built, and the Chapel of St. Sarac demolished, that it is impossible to decide what was the exact plan of the ancient Church. The Tower is 64ft. 6in. in height, that is, nearly 40ft. lower than the vault of the Nave of Westminster Abbey. It is almost a square, being 24ft. by 23ft. Before the restoration there was a ringing gallery a few feet from the basement, and this and the space below were dark and gloomy in the extreme. The gallery was pulled down, and the bellropes being lengthened, the bells were rung from the basement, until the organ was moved to its present situation under the Tower. At that time some fears were entertained that it would be impossible to ring so near the bells as the story next below them, but it answers perfectly well, and the bells are now rung from the clock room. Almost the whole of the area was excavated for the heating apparatus, (supplied by Messrs. Haden, of Trowbridge), which has been found to work extremely well. The Church is thoroughly well warmed all through the winter.

When the organ was placed where it now is, it became necessary to make a new entrance to the belfry staircase from the outside, and this was done by piercing through the Tower in the North-East angle. The belfry can now be reached without going through the Church.

We have great reason to be proud of our peal of bells. They are eight in number, and of excellent tone and quality. The small treble bell was cracked, and we sent it to Messrs. Mears, the celebrated bell-founders in London, to be re-cast. This was done, and at the same time the other bells were tuned. We have, I am glad to say, a record concerning some of the bells in an old parish book. It is much to be regretted that there are so few of these ancient records remaining. The entry is as follows, under November 15th, 1640, (a memorable year, that of the opening of the Long Parliament in the reign of King Charles I.)

"Whereas y charge of casting ye foure bells of ye parrish, together with ye addition of new mettall for ye enlarging of ye same is guest by ye church-wardens and others that it will arise to ye value of £130, this day it was ordered and agreede upon by consent of Vestry, that that part of yo parish which lies in Oxfordshire shall pay £40 for their part of ye whole, and that ye other £90 shall be layd