But seriously - Mid-Lent Sunday

[Gabrielle Dean]

Mid-Lent Sunday - article from the Chipping Norton News.

When I was a child my brother and I would cycle to Chesterton Woods to pick primroses for our mother – she wanted no truck with the 
new-fangled Mother’s Day which had arrived from the USA with the Yanks  just a few years before. She ensured that we knew the origins of the day – Mid-Lent Sunday as it was on this day that the devout parishioners went to the Mother Church of the parish, or the Cathedral 
of the diocese, to make their offerings. Sometime during the seventeenth century the day became the festival of human motherhood 
when the whole family met together and apprentices and servants were given the day off – probably the only holiday in the year – and took 
flowers gathered from the hedgerows and, sometimes the gift of a simnel cake to their mothers from their employers.

Simnel cakes had been known from mediaeval times and the word simnel probably derived from the latin word ‘simila’, meaning fine, wheaten flour from which the cakes were made. There were local specialities and Shrewsbury, Devizes and Bury made large quantities to their own special recipes and shapes – all were very rich with ingredients similar to those in Christmas cakes. It was the Shrewsbury version that became widespread. The fourth Sunday in Lent is still known as Simnel Sunday in some areas.

Simnel-style cakes are now also eaten at Easter when eleven balls of marzipan are placed around the top layer to represent the eleven true 
disciples but the really good cake has a layer of delicious sticky marzipan in the centre and it was this variety that my mother made so 
the long bike ride was well rewarded.