The presence (and decline) of private pew seats in English churches reflects changing attitudes towards social class, the financial struggles of the Anglican church, and religious principles regarding the equality (or otherwise) of parishioners, as well as the focus of church services.
The Pew Rent Controversy:-
By the 18th Century the renting of church pews was such an entrenched custom that application for a faculty (official permission granted by the Diocese) was supposed to be submitted. Under these faculties it was stipulated that each pew rent must be allocated on a specific basis (for example, according to ownership of a specific property, or by an occupational qualification), and that non-parishioners were not allowed to rent a pew. In practice, however, it was not unknown for pews to be rented out wholesale, even to non-parishioners, without Diocesan approval being obtained.
In 1818, with Parliamentary consent, the Church Building Society made it a condition of providing grants for new churches, that a certain proportion of ‘Free seats’ should be provided for the poor (much like builders today are required to provide ‘affordable homes’ on new housing developments). Yet the days of pew rents were already numbered. Under the pressure of a growing population, industrialisation, and competition from non-conformist movements, it was clear that the presence of private pews was squeezing the workers and the poor out of Church of England services, where even standing room only was unable to cope with the numbers.
From the 1840s, the practice of pew-renting was the subject of heated debate in pamphlets, Parliamentary debates and newspaper editorials. Campaigners, such as Maria Rosetti, and the poet, Christina Rossetti (sisters of the Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet, Dante Gabriel Rossetti), and their mother, Frances, all members of the High Anglican Church, argued that the commercialisation of pews was an affront to God and the supposed equality of all worshippers inside the church. Similarly, in 1850, Baptist pamphleteer, Samuel Richards, wrote:
“…it originates in the latent depravity of the human heart, in a morbid desire to ponder to the squeamishness and pride of one class of hearers, to the inconvenience, annoyance, and injustice of the other; with the additional view of converting the House of Prayer into the House of Gain.”
He noted that one local church charged an exorbitant five shillings a week for a front row pew, and one shilling for the back row, to be paid in quarterly instalments.
The legality of the practice of selling the rights, or sub-letting, private pews was hotly debated and often disputed by many lawyers. Opponents argued that if one pew could be privatised, then theoretically all seats inside a church could be rented out, which would be contrary to the common right of all parishioners to have a place in their church. It would also be extremely unfair if the owner of a property associated with the pew happened to leave the parish, yet still retained the right to the seat inside the church, for him or herself and their heirs. There was potential conflict between landlords and their tenants who would both have the right to sit in the private pew, since these seats were usually allocated to specific properties rather than individual people. This technicality also caused problems when properties were sub-divided, abandoned or demolished, and replaced by new properties. It was pointed out that as populations grew, the provision of additional church seating was being restricted by the existence of under-used private pews.
The Church Building Act of 1818 officially recognised the practice of pew renting, by stipulating that at least 20% of the seating in newly erected churches must be ‘free’. Subsequent Church Building legislation (of which there were 21 separate Acts from 1819 to 1869) also attempted to limit the number of private pews within each newly built church. In an act of 1860, for example, at least half the seats in any newly built church were to be free seats. However, these acts of Parliament did not affect existing private pews in older churches. A lawyer of the Inner Temple in London, Alfred Heales, discussed in detail the legal intricacies associated with private pews. For instance, he acknowledged that if rent arrears for a pew went unpaid for over three months, the churchwarden had the right to sell the pew rights by auction – provided the new tenant of that pew was a resident in the parish.[1] Indeed, it was generally agreed that if a pew seat was left unoccupied for over a year – even if the rents had been paid – then the churchwardens could sell the rights to someone else.
In response to increasing criticism of the system of privately rented pews, Sidney Billing, a barrister in the Middle Temple, argued in favour of pew-rents, citing a number of legal precedents, as well as his belief that the social classes should remain separated. He declared: “The unprovided old age, and sickness spoken of is too often the result of improvidence”, whereas the wealthier, he declared, had earned their right to keep their own pews, and avoid “an indiscriminate admixture” with fellow parishioners. In other words, idleness and bad habits caused poverty, in which case the poorer parishioner did not deserve a private seat, and should be kept segregated from the more ‘respectable’ congregants. If even the poor had the right to sit on their own cushions or kneel on hassocks for comfort, he continued, then why should those who had earned their wealth not buy the extra comfort of a private pew.[2]
On a more practical level, the value of pew-rents to church income should not be under-estimated. The law recognised that pew rents were often essential sources of income, often used to pay the salaries or expenses of curates, church clerks, and other church officials (such as ‘pew-openers’), provide accommodation for the clergyman, or fund church building repairs. Many parish churches clung on to the practice into the late 19th Century, often on financial grounds. In the 1870s almost all older churches and chapels in the West Riding of Yorkshire were still charging pew-rents, many viewing them as compensation for the loss of tithes and declining returns from church rates.
The Decline of the Private Pew:-
However, few new box pews were installed after the 1850s, often on the grounds that dwindling Church incomes made the trouble of maintaining box pews less feasible. Yet a Parliamentary enquiry in 1886 found that while only 4% of churches built before 1800 still rented out pews, curiously about 45% of new churches did.
High Church Anglicans, mindful of theological considerations, had already begun to cut down the height of the box-pew walls, or even remove them altogether, in order to give renewed focus to the sacraments at the altar, rather than listening to sermons from the pulpit. There was also the aesthetic influence of the popular cultural movement of the Gothic Revival. Many Anglican clergy, attempting to restore the fashionable Gothic-medieval feel to their church interiors, replaced their box-pews with bench pews, which were less easy to privatise.
In Skipton there are some references to pew rights being sold along with their associated properties. For example Pew No. 9 in the organ gallery was put up for sale in July 1810 along with the Masons Arms Pub (later known as The Fountain Inn, in Middle Row; now known as 68 High Street) [23rd July 1810, ‘Leeds Intelligencer’]; and a half-share in a pew came with the purchase of Mrs Glover’s property consisting of five cottages and Hole-in-the-Wall Inn [17th December, 1810, ‘Leeds Intelligencer’]. Just over 30 years later Mrs Preston’s right to a pew was also up for auction, as were two seats in Pew No. 7. [25th September, 1841 – ‘Leeds Intelligencer’ & ‘Leeds Mercury’].
According to Roger Pyrah, in his history of Skipton’s Holy Trinity Church, new box pews were installed in 1719, but removed in 1855, and replaced with the bench pews that are still used today. [3] Yet, as late as 1867 the Skipton ironmonger, John Manby, was advertising a house to let in the Market Place together with three adjoining cottages, together with rights to a pew in the North gallery of the parish church. [18th May 1867, ‘Craven Herald’]
Free Church Seats in Embsay:-
In 1851 the ‘Incorporated Society for Promoting the Enlargement, Building and Repairing of Churches and Chapels’, agreed to donate towards the building of a church at Embsay. The village’s population had grown significantly to 1,047 people, mainly due to influx of mill workers.[4]
By 1853 Embsay-with-Eastby finally had its own church, dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin. The ‘Society for Promoting the Enlargement, Building and Repair of Churches and Chapels’ (also known as The Church Building Society), which had contributed towards the costs of the building, often put up a notice in newly built churches to the effect that their donation had been conditional on a certain number of seats being made freely available for poorer parishioners. This was a metal pro forma style metal plaque, on which the relevant numbers for the specific church would be added.
The application which had been made to the charity had stipulated that 90 of the seats would be for children – each child given 14 inches by 20 inches per bottom. The number of adult seats was calculated on an average bottom size of 30inches by 20 inches! Although this did not necessarily preclude the installation of rented pews, in the case of Embsay’s newly built church the resulting number of free seats (317) made it clear there was no room left for additional private pews.
After all, it was specifically built with the mill workers in mind – they were all given the day off to attend the laying of the foundation stone [January 31st 1852– Leeds intelligencer].
In a pointed dig at the well-established non-conformist elements that were dominant in the villages of Embsay and Eastby, the Rev. Kidd, vicar of Skipton, in his speech at the opening of St. Mary’s, emphasised that this newly built Anglican church asserted:
“the necessity of increased accommodation of the poor in the poor man’s Church, that the lessons of the gospel might be extended to our densely populated but ill-instructed districts… [He] expressed his trust that those who had hitherto attended the services in the school room, would now with others gladly assemble in the Church… We do not expect (for the age of miracles hath ceased) a new church to be a full church; but it will be an open church, free alike to all who may enter, free as our Father’s gracious love.”
Jane Lunnon, Embsay-with-Eastby Historical Research Group.
Sources
Mary Arsenaeu – “Pews, periodicals and politics; the Rossetti women as High Church controversialists” (in : David Clifford & Laurence Rousillon (eds.) – “Outsiders Looking in; The Rossettis Then and Now”, Anthem Press, 2004 : Part III. Faith in an age of Science, pp. 97 – 114)
John Charles Bennett – “How Formal Anglican Pew-Renting Worked in Practice, 1800–1950” (Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Volume 68 , Issue 4 , October 2017, pp. 766 – 783)
John Charles Bennett – “The English Anglican Practice of Pew Renting, 1800-1960” (Ph.D. Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2011)
John Coke Fowler – “Church Pews, their origin and legal incidents with some observations on the propriety of abolishing them” (1844; full text available online at: http://anglicanhistory.org/misc/freechurch/fowler_pews1844.html )
S.J.D. Green – “The Death of Pew-Rents, the Rise of Bazaars, and the End of the Traditional Political Economy of Voluntary Religious Organisations: The Case of the West Riding of Yorkshire, c. 1870–1914” (Northern History, Vol. 27, issue 1, pp. 198-235. 1991)
Alfred Heales – “The History and Law of Church Seats or Pews; Book II. Law” (1872; full text available online on Google Books)
Roger Pyrah – “The Parish Church of the Holy Trinity Skipton: a history and guide” (rev. ed. 2002)
Samuel Richards – “The Pew and its Rent; Or, the Practice of Christian Churches compared with the revealed Word of God” (Bristol, 1850) Dr Geoffrey Rowley – Notebooks, File C (Skipton Reference Library)
[1] Heales (1872), p. 146
[2] Sidney Billing – “The laws relating to Pews in Churches… and the Remedy for Wrongs” (1845)
[3] Roger Pyrah (2002)
[4] Morning Post, London July 23rd 1851 – and several other national & provincial newspapers.
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