Chapels in British boarding schools

[or.phan_ann]

> Carol wrote in Message 33640:
>
> (It seems to me that she could have moved the events of the books  
> back by just one century and avoided the problem since British      
> society was less secular at that time.)
> 
> Thoughts, anyone?

Ann:
I've heard opinions like these before, probably in the list archives 
and certainly in this essay of Red Hen's (scroll about two fingers' 
widths down), where she relates a friend opining that they read as if 
set in the 1950s, and herself thinks that they would fit beter in the 
1930s:

http://www.redhen-publications.com/1945.html

I think the historical research would have been at least one problem 
for JKR - which I say without snark; I've written one or two 
historical stories myself. A problem with setting the books 
specifically in the 1930s is that the rise of Voldemort would 
parallel the rise of Hitler much less comfortably than Grindelwald's 
managed. But apart from that, I feel that the 1930s would be the best 
time to set the books. Why that is, I can't quite say (Swallows and 
Amazons, perhaps?) but I also feel that they have to be set in the 
20th Century, after Edith Nesbit began writing for children rather 
than at them.

Regarding chapels, though, all schools in Britain are, I think, 
religious, with the default being C of E. But that's often a rather 
broad category. At my secondary school we sang hymns and prayed at 
least once a week at first, but later stopped altogether. The staff 
tried to revive this, with results amusing to me at the time. Oh, the 
callowness of youth. (Oh, and this was wrapped into assemblies, which 
took place in the main hall; but then, it wasn't a boarding school.)

Ann