The little-known story of the lady who rescued Mothering Sunday

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 a couple of hundred years ago. This is the story …

Constance Adelaide Smith

In 1878, Miss Constance Adelaide Smith was born within the small Buckinghamshire village of Dagnall. Dagnall lies within 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 kids of the Rev Charles Penswick Smith, the local vicar, and his wife Mary. Four of her brothers later went on to turn into 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 on the Hospital for Skin Diseases in Nottingham. Throughout her life she was energetic in Anglican church life and in organisations similar to the Girls’ Friendly Society.

Mothering Sunday

Mothering Sunday traditionally fell on the fourth Sunday in Lent. Its origin lies within the lectionary reading for that Sunday, Galatians 4:21–31, about Jerusalem who’s our mother. Various traditions arose across the theme of motherhood. However, by the early twentieth century the old English custom of Mothering Sunday had almost disappeared from strange 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 lots of rural church traditions.

American Mother’s Day

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic within the USA, something latest was happening. From 1908, a girl called Anna Jarvis from West Virginia began campaigning for a dedicated Mother’s Day, unaware that such a convention had existed up to now within 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 moms, increasingly sure up with cards, flowers, and commerce.

It was sometime in 1913 that Constance read of this American movement and felt each inspired and horrified. She recognised the worth of honouring moms. However, she feared that a latest, 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 didn’t 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 provide their moms and, in 1917 in the course of the Great War, she wrote to army chaplains encouraging them to get soldiers to put in writing home to their moms.

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 4 complementary emphases of motherhood.

She taught that Mothering Sunday should honour:

– The “Mother Church”: the local parish and the broader Church where believers are baptised and spiritually nourished in Word and Sacrament.

– Human moms and mother-figures: those that 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 because the nurturing environment wherein all life is sustained, pointing to the Creator’s windfall.

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 similar to 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 never a public figure, and he or she didn’t give many speeches. She worked from a modest base in Nottingham with patient, dogged persistence. Around 1920 she teamed up along 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 might easily use. She wrote short plays and sketches that could possibly be performed in parishes or girls’ clubs, bringing the story and meaning of the day alive. She and her 4 priest brothers organised services in their very own churches to model how Mothering Sunday could possibly be marked liturgically.

She approached groups just like the Mothers’ Union and other church organisations looking for support. At first many clergy and non secular societies were hesitant, but steadily 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 excellence. As a result, “Mother’s Day” and “Mothering Sunday” at the moment are often used interchangeably. The date in Britain stays 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 on the age of 60 and was buried at Coddington next to her father. In 1951 the Lady Chapel on 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, on the constructing 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 on the age of 74.

Although Constance had no children, her legacy is that Mother’s Day within the British Isles stays the fourth Sunday in Lent and is a typical tradition throughout the British Isles, in Nigeria, and in parts of the Anglican Communion world wide.

Collect

The Mothers’ Union collect prayer for Mothering Sunday is:

“God of affection,
passionate and robust,
tender and careful:
watch over us and hold us
all of the days of our life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen”