Room with a pew

Bought, sold and inherited, parish seating not only confirmed social status, but came with its own temptations, discovers Andrew Green

- Andrew Green

NEXT time you suffer backache in a church pew, count your blessings. In pre-Reformation England, there was no significant concern that congregations should be provided with seating. Fixed pews were becoming more common, but were hardly widespread. Commonly during Mass, you either stood or knelt—or perhaps perched on your own stool or portable bench. The elderly and infirm might be able to rest against a stone ledge set into the walls. Hence, it is said, the expression ‘the weak go to the wall’ (referenced by Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet).

The growing importance of the sermon changed things, a development underway in pre-Reformation times, but embraced drama- tically in Protestant practice. Preaching mara- thons prevailed and congregations would no longer stand (quite literally) for the lack of seating. Hence the inexorable growth of pew installation from the later 16th century.

One reason that pews have proved such an intriguing study (for surprising numbers of researchers) is that their use was bound up with social hierarchies. Churchgoers with ready cash would either rent a pew for themselves and their families or own one, possibly elaborate in design and made to the owner’s specification. What could better—and more regularly—confirm your status in front of the community? ‘Where you sat mattered,’ says Trevor Cooper, co-editor of the endlessly fascinating volume Pews, Benches & Chairs. ‘Important folk were keen to have seats close to the pulpit. Arguments about who sat where could cause serious trouble.’