A Surrey parish church with Saxon origins and mentioned in the Domesday Book brings to 65 the number of churches which have joined the Prayer Book Society as corporate members.

Use of the Book of Common Prayer for all but a monthly family service at the church of St Peter & St Paul, Nutfield, goes back further than anyone can remember.

Today Prayer Book services in Nutfield include a monthly sung Holy Communion using the setting of John Merbecke, together with other musical settings, a fortnightly said Holy Communion and Choral Matins and Choral Evensong.

Church members say they love and value the ancient language of the Prayer Book and membership of the society will be one way of ensuring its continuing use as the parish is about to go into an interregnum.

One parishioner commented: ‘It ensures continuity and a link with the forms of worship used by countless previous generations.’

She added: ‘If one visits a gallery to view an Old Master it would jar if some of the detail had been modernised. It is just the same with The Book of Common Prayer; the musicality and rhythm of the words should not be tampered with as that destroys the reverence.’