A delightful gift for anyone moving house or setting up home and a useful resource for all who are called to perform house blessings.

The act of blessing is a powerful one in Christianity with deep biblical roots, reaching back to the early chapters of Genesis. It expresses a very basic human instinct – the longing for protection, peace and happiness. So it is not surprising that the world is full of blessings for that most basic of human provisions – a place to call home.

Peter Watkins has collected together over 100 house blessings from widely differing cultures and sources – the Bible, Celtic spirituality, Latin prayers (translated here!), prayers of St Francis and other saints, poems of blessing from Robert Herrick and other literary figures, contemporary liturgies for rites of blessing for each room of a home – and much more.

In addition there is a short selection of readings on the theme of home and homesickness from a wide range of literary and popular sources.