Lammastide was marked at Southwark Cathedral on Friday when a new loaf from Borough Market provided the communion bread.

The celebration began in the Bread Ahead bakery where the Dean of Southwark, The Very Revd Mark Oakley, blessed harvest grain, new bread, the bakers and bakery students with holy water.

Afterwards a harvest sheaf, new bread including a large Cathedral Loaf, were carried in procession across the road and into the cathedral.

Lammas means ‘loaf mass‘ and the loaves were placed in front of the altar for the Eucharist or Mass.

The Dean was the celebrant assisted by Canon Roxanne Eversley who read the passage from Deuteronomy featuring ‘all the fruit of there ground, which you harvest from the land’.

Lammas used to be the ‘harvest festival’ for the start of harvest on 1 August but this summer pilgrims from Southwark to Canterbury have been walking through fields already cut.

Prayers were offered that we may conserve and share the earth’s resources. Earlier, at the bakery, the Dean had spoken of this year’s difficult harvest.

Following the service Bread Ahead hosted the congregation for doughnuts and coffee.