ADVERTISEMENTS have always played a vital part in the economy of the Church Times. To begin with, they were hard to attract, but soon they occupied up to half the available space in each number.

A particular strength was the classified ads, or "smalls". By the 20th century, these occupied up to 30 columns a week. Categories such as "Private Hotels, Board, Etc." and "Apartments to Let" extended over many column-inches. "Schools for Sale" featured regularly. Until the 1940s, many smalls were for domestic help and companions. Some were very specific:

WANTED, at once, a very PLAIN COOK for a very quiet, easy place in a clergyman's house. A good, earnest-minded Churchwoman indispensable, and very steady.

Clerics seeking livings or locum tenens positions advertised. Parsons seeking assistant curates might, as one did, emphasise the desirability of a slow bowler.

Well-known churches advertised their bazaars, as well as their service times, until the 1950s; and a column that readers often turned to in the mid-20th century was "Appeals", where regulars such as Fr George Potter BHC of Peckham and the Revd Desmond Morse-Boycott, with his St Mary of the Angels Song-School, made idiosyncratic requests for support for their ministry among working-class boys, including anecdotes and personal thank-yous: "We cordially thank Messrs. T. B. Ford for a generous donation of their famous blotting-papers."

The paper was (and still is) a platform for clerical outfitters, and church publishers, furnishers, and suppliers, such as Mowbray's, Pax House, Farris's Candles (whose ad was for many years an elaborate full-page with a "big six"), and

Vino Sacro (still advertising in this issue), which declared itself confidently "The perfect communion wine."

Ads could be controversial, as when the back-to-Baroque Society of SS. Peter & Paul promoted itself a century ago as "Catholic Publishers to the Church of England", and the Gay Christian Movement first advertised in the 1970s.

Leading brands used to appear regularly. Fry's and other makes of cocoa feature strongly at first, with large claims made. In the 1940s, it was quite normal to see ads, for instance, for Rowntrees, Marmite, Sunlight soap, Horlicks, Osram, and Bob Martins conditioning powders for dogs. Will's Capstan cigarettes were also a regular fixture.

There was a touching concern by advertisers, for the state of the readers' digestion. Strip-cartoon adverts for Kelloggs All-bran, with headlines such as "A Sister's Secret" and "A Word to the Wise", featured earnest conversations about constipation. Ryvita's approach was subtler. The advertisements took the form of the answer to an unasked abdominal question: "Fine, thanks! I eat something crisp and crunchy every day."

But, by the 1950s, most of these products had left the field in favour of enticing new visions of motor-mowers, stacking chairs, electric organs, and stewardship envelopes.