15 March 2026, or the fourth Sunday in Lent, is Mothering Sunday in Britain and Ireland. The tradition nearly died and was rescued by a determined vicar’s daughter about a hundred years ago. This is the story …
Constance Adelaide Smith
In 1878, Miss Constance Adelaide Smith was born in the small Buckinghamshire village of Dagnall. Dagnall lies in the Chiltern Hills, near the border with Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, and since 1926 has been near Whipsnade Zoo. Constance was the third of seven children born into an Anglican household, the children of the Rev Charles Penswick Smith, the local vicar, and his wife Mary. Four of her brothers later went on to become Anglican priests.
Move to Nottinghamshire
In 1890, when she was twelve years old, the family upped and left Bucks and moved north when her father became vicar of All Saints Church, Coddington, near Newark. There she attended a dame school in Newark, and later a ladies’ school in Nottingham. After leaving school aged seventeen, she helped teach her younger brother, then worked as a governess in Germany. In 1901 she returned to England to work as a dispenser at the Hospital for Skin Diseases in Nottingham. Throughout her life she was active in Anglican church life and in organisations such as the Girls’ Friendly Society.
Mothering Sunday
Mothering Sunday traditionally fell on the fourth Sunday in Lent. Its origin lies in the lectionary reading for that Sunday, Galatians 4:21–31, about Jerusalem who is our mother. Various traditions arose around the theme of motherhood. However, by the early 20th century the old English custom of Mothering Sunday had almost disappeared from ordinary parish life, except as a regional curiosity here and there. Industrialisation, drift to the cities, and changing social patterns had led to a decline in many rural church traditions.
American Mother’s Day
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic in the USA, something new was happening. From 1908, a lady called Anna Jarvis from West Virginia began campaigning for a dedicated Mother’s Day, unaware that such a tradition had existed in the past in the old country. In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed a national Mother’s Day for the second Sunday in May. This American festival, though rooted in Christian sentiment, quickly became a largely secular celebration of individual mothers, increasingly bound up with cards, flowers, and commerce.
It was sometime in 1913 that Constance read of this American movement and felt both inspired and horrified. She recognised the value of honouring mothers. However, she feared that a new, secular imported Mother’s Day could displace the older, historic Christian tradition of Mothering Sunday tied to the Church calendar. As a devout Anglican she did not want Britain to import an American civic holiday and lose its own spiritual heritage. Constance quietly began what became a life’s work to revive Mothering Sunday embedded in Christian tradition.
In 1913 she produced “In Praise of Mother: A Story of Mothering Sunday”, and in 1915 she produced “A Short History of Mothering Sunday”. She designed Mothering Sunday cards for Sunday School children to give their mothers and, in 1917 during the Great War, she wrote to army chaplains encouraging them to get soldiers to write home to their mothers.
A fourfold mothering
Constance’s genius was theological as much as organisational. She reimagined Mothering Sunday not as a rival to Mother’s Day but as a richer Christian festival with four complementary emphases of motherhood.
She taught that Mothering Sunday should honour:
– The “Mother Church”: the local parish and the wider Church where believers are baptised and spiritually nourished in Word and Sacrament.
– Human mothers and mother-figures: those who have borne, raised, or spiritually nurtured children, including godparents and others who show motherly care.
– Mary, the human mother of Jesus: the one who bore Jesus, representing the Church’s own motherly calling.
– “Mother Nature”: God’s creation as the nurturing environment in which all life is sustained, pointing to the Creator’s providence.
In 1921 she published a book called “The Revival of Mothering Sunday” under her assumed name of Constance Penswick Smith. In this she set out her themes and documented evidence of traditional practices from across Britain and beyond. She linked the day to medieval customs such as visiting the mother church, bringing offerings, and rejoicing with special foods like simnel cake.
The Society for the Observance of Mothering Sunday
Constance was not famous and not a public figure, and she did not give many speeches. She worked from a modest base in Nottingham with patient, dogged persistence. Around 1920 she teamed up with her friend Ellen Porter, who was Superintendent of the Girls’ Friendly Society hostel in Nottingham. Working together they established The Society for the Observance of Mothering Sunday, with its headquarters at 15 Regent Street, Nottingham.
In 1921 she produced The Revival of Mothering Sunday, which was reprinted in 1932. In 1932 she published The Feast of Mothering: How to Make Simnel Cakes, Furmety, Mi-Carême Custards, and Other Delights.
To make it easier for people to adopt Mothering Sunday she compiled hymns and prayers suitable for services, giving clergy and choirs resources they could easily use. She wrote short plays and sketches that could be performed in parishes or girls’ clubs, bringing the story and meaning of the day alive. She and her four priest brothers organised services in their own churches to model how Mothering Sunday could be marked liturgically.
She approached groups like the Mothers’ Union and other church organisations seeking support. At first many clergy and religious societies were hesitant, but gradually support grew and spread. By the time of her death in 1938, observers could claim that Mothering Sunday was marked in every parish of the Church of England and in every country of the British Empire. The story featured on BBC Songs of Praise on 31 March 2019.
Second World War
During the Second World War, the presence of American and Canadian troops in Britain brought British people into contact with North American Mother’s Day customs, which blurred the distinction. As a result, “Mother’s Day” and “Mothering Sunday” are now often used interchangeably. The date in Britain remains the fourth Sunday in Lent, and the churches still hold a central place in its celebration, which is a direct legacy of Constance Penswick-Smith’s campaign.
Legacy
Constance Penswick-Smith never married and had no children. She died in 1938 at the age of 60 and was buried at Coddington next to her father. In 1951 the Lady Chapel at the parish church in Coddington was dedicated to her memory. There is now a blue plaque to her in Coddington, erected by the Coddington History Group, at the building where she attended school.
Her gravestone reads: “Founder of the Movement for the Revival of the Observance of Mothering Sunday.” Her friend Ellen Porter later continued the work of the Movement from her home in Nottingham until she died in 1942 at the age of 74.
Although Constance had no children, her legacy is that Mother’s Day in the British Isles remains the fourth Sunday in Lent and is a common tradition throughout the British Isles, in Nigeria, and in parts of the Anglican Communion around the world.
Collect
The Mothers’ Union collect prayer for Mothering Sunday is:
“God of love,
passionate and strong,
tender and careful:
watch over us and hold us
all the days of our life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen”
