Where to See Nativity Scenes in England

The finest English nativity isn’t the fanciest. It’s the one where three things were swapped out.

Durham Cathedral Durham, County Durham

Carved by Michael Doyle, a local coal miner, from aged oak from the nearby Raby estate, donated by Lord Barnard. The cathedral’s page.

The three substitutions

Instead of the innkeeper, there’s a miner holding a lamp and a water bottle. Instead of the donkey, a pit pony in harness, the kind that hauled coal underground. And the Christ Child doesn’t lie in a manger but in a choppie box, the feed box the ponies ate from in the mine. A coal-mining region made its nativity from its own world, just as Provence filled its crèche with local tradespeople.

When

The crib is blessed at the same time the tree is lit, on a Sunday afternoon in December. Free, no tickets needed. We couldn’t find the year the nativity was made, and we won’t guess.

Don’t mix up the two Westminsters: the Anglican abbey and the Catholic cathedral. The abbey describes its crib; the cathedral doesn’t.

Westminster Abbey London

The figures were designed by the Reverend Christopher Hildyard, a former sacristan, donated by Lady de Grimston, carved in linden wood by Hans and Adolf Heinzeller in Oberammergau, and painted in England. They were first set up at Christmas 1966, replacing a 1939 set. There are about ten figures and animals, each about five feet tall; two of the animals were carved from an old roof beam saved during a restoration. The abbey’s page.

The detail not to miss

The shepherds are there through the Christmas season, and the Three Kings replace them at Epiphany. And one of the Kings is Saint Edward the Confessor, who founded the abbey. A nativity that puts its own founder among the Wise Men: it’s the Provençal idea of bringing the scene home, royal-style.

Westminster Cathedral Catholic cathedral, LondonReported

There is a crib (the cardinal invited people to visit it in his Midnight Mass homily), but the cathedral doesn’t describe it anywhere on its website: no location, no figures, no blessing. The only history we found comes from an unofficial blog, which says the crib was moved around 1926 behind the altar of Saint Paul, with new figures in 1928. We’re passing that along as we found it.

Two things on the same square, sixty years apart. People often mix them up, but they’re separate stories.

The nativity Trafalgar Square, LondonReported

Chosen in a competition and carved in linden wood by Tomoaki Suzuki: twelve pieces at forty percent of life size, installed for Christmas 2006. The fashion designer Jessica Ogden designed the clothing, and the animals were modeled on animals from Hackney City Farm. The sculptor worked from live models, first in clay, then plaster, then wood.

The tree, which is another matter

Since 1947, the people of Norway have given London a tree every year: a Norway spruce more than 65 feet tall and fifty to sixty years old, picked from the forests around Oslo. It’s a thank-you for Britain’s help during World War II, and it has nothing to do with the nativity.

The blessing

St Martin-in-the-Fields, the church on the corner of the square, holds the Blessing of the Crib on a Sunday late afternoon in December, with a live donkey, music and its choir. Free, no tickets needed. The church’s page hadn’t posted this year’s date yet.

In Anglican cathedrals, the crib is less about the object and more about the moment: a service where you come to see it blessed.

York Minster York

The crib service is on December 24, late morning. Free, no tickets needed. The crib is blessed, and children are invited to come dressed as Nativity characters. Of all the cathedrals we checked, this one’s page was the only one already announcing this year’s service.

St Paul’s Cathedral London

A carved wooden nativity on display during Advent and Christmas, with a blessing and tree lighting around December 21. Free, no tickets needed. Note: St Paul’s has no crib service on December 24. That day there’s a Carol Service (tickets required), then Midnight Mass. It’s an easy mistake to make.

Canterbury Cathedral Canterbury, Kent

An outdoor nativity on the cathedral grounds, a short family crib service on the morning of December 24, and in mid-December, a living Nativity scene acted out by children of the cathedral parish during the carol festival. A living nativity in a major Anglican cathedral is rarer than you might think.

And Salisbury

A 33-foot tree and a carved wooden nativity during Advent, at a cathedral that had already posted its procession dates for late November. But we found no crib service there, so don’t plan on one.

This is the real English tradition, and it’s almost unheard of elsewhere: a show where everyone brings their own nativity.

The idea

A parish opens its church for two or three days in December, and local families, schools and groups bring their nativity scenes. Old and new, tiny and large, from other countries, made of surprising materials, sometimes downright funny. You don’t come to see one nativity. You come to see your neighbors’. It’s an idea any American parish could borrow.

St Cuthbert’s Church Wells, Somerset

A three-day festival every year in early December, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. One year, one of the nativity scenes was made entirely of cheese; the mayor and the town crier came to the opening. The town’s report.

Bishop’s Stortford HertfordshireReported

The Methodist church there has held its festival since 2017. One recent year had thirty-three nativity scenes: made of chess pieces, knitted, pottery, recycled materials and hand-blown glass, and for the first time, visitors voted for their favorite.

How to find one

They’re announced late and locally, on parish websites and in local papers. Search for “crib festival” and the name of the county. If you know of one, tell us.

In Surrey, one family has put on an outdoor Nativity play since the late 1980s.

Wintershall Bramley, Guildford, Surrey

Peter and Ann Hutley started it in 1989 after coming home from a pilgrimage. The first Nativity was performed in a barn they’d bought at auction a few weeks earlier: Peter Hutley had told his children that if they won it, they’d use it for God. The family’s story.

Today

About four thousand people come every December, over three days, with two shows a day. When we wrote this, its dates page had already posted this year’s mid-December dates, one of the few on this page to do so.

What grew out of it

In 1999 the same family launched a five-hour Life of Christ with more than a hundred actors, and since 2010 they’ve staged a free Passion play in Trafalgar Square on Good Friday, for about twenty thousand people. A barn in Surrey ended up filling London’s most famous square.

No page about the nativity in England can skip this chapter. But it’s important to get the facts straight.

It wasn’t Cromwell

The popular line “Cromwell banned Christmas” isn’t accurate, and two English institutions point that out: the bans were passed by Parliament, and Cromwell only became Lord Protector later, in December 1653. Historic England’s explanation.

The timeline

December 1643: an order calls for the season to be spent in “solemn humiliation” rather than “carnal delights.” 1644: Christmas, Easter and Pentecost (Whitsun) celebrations are abolished. January 1645: the new rules for worship say these days aren’t to be celebrated but spent in quiet reflection. On June 8, 1647, an ordinance officially abolishes “the Feast of the Nativity of Christ, Easter and Whitsuntide, and other Festivals commonly called Holy-Days.”

The detail no one mentions

To make up for it, the same 1647 ordinance gave apprentices and servants a day off on the second Tuesday of every month. The holidays were gone, but lawmakers knew people still needed a break.

And after

From 1647 until the monarchy was restored in 1660, Christmas was officially illegal in England (and across the Atlantic, Massachusetts passed its own ban in 1659). One more note: we found no source that directly links the return of the crib to Catholics regaining their rights in 1829 or to the Oxford Movement. What we can say is that every English nativity we could date is fairly recent: Westminster 1928 and 1966, Trafalgar Square 2006. Our sources show no unbroken tradition before the 1900s.