For twenty-first-century worshippers used to walking into any church, selecting an empty seat and occupying it, the complexities and nuanced arrangements of late-Georgian seating is a subject that will repay attention. Seating was certainly a subject that exercised church builders and church wardens in this period, and it had a profound impact on the arrangement of church interiors. This chapter explores the different classes of seating – appropriated, rented, visitors, free and civic – and examines how locating them within a church was addressed by architects and churchwardens. In this chapter, the word ‘pew’ refers only to seating that was other than a free bench.

Late-Georgian churchgoing

An examination of late-Georgian seating introduces a lost world of church interiors, which might be stacked with galleries resembling a theatre along with civic pews where those occupying them were the subject of conspicuous ceremonial. It also involves consideration of a number of parish officials who disappeared through the Victorian era: beadles, pew-openers and sellers of admission tickets to visitors. These were all common in urban centres, although rarer in villages. A beadle was a parish officer who might oversee the workhouse, policing and various local charities. He was a man of some authority and on Sundays would be in church to oversee behaviour, chiefly in the free seats and those occupied by the charity children. He was an impressive figure (see Fig. 0.10). In Dickens’ 1839 account, on a Sunday he would be in ‘state-coat and cocked-hat, with a large-headed staff for show in his left hand, and a small cane for use in his right. How pompously he marshals the children into their places!’ Pew-opening seems to have been an exclusively female occupation. A much-travelled ‘Merchant Taylor’ recorded his visits to ‘the numerous Churches of the Metropolis’ where he had ‘uniformly found … clean and obliging women always as pew openers, who constantly placed [him] in a seat.’ In addition to seating visitors in vacant pews, these ladies led those who rented pews to that place, opened and closed the door for them, and generally made them feel comfortable. Sometimes they received a regular wage from the parish, but elsewhere might rely on tips, perhaps sixpence. At St Mary, Somers Town, London, in the 1820s there was a head pew opener (paid £16 p.a.), five assistants, paid £8 each, and a chapel beadle, paid £30 guineas.

Aside from the often challenging legal, administrative and financial issues that surrounded church building in this period, questions surrounding the appearance of the new building needed to be settled. These involved far more than fashion or connoisseurship: style conveyed messages. And in the Establishment's endeavour to reclaim its central place in the heart of the nation, perception was crucial. What style best engendered reverential awe and conveyed notions of tradition – of Anglicanism's central place in the nation's triumphant history – as the Church endeavoured to reassert itself after decades of inactivity and arrest the worrying spread of Nonconformity and atheism? And symbolically, a new church was as important to those who merely walked past it as it was to those who worshipped within it.

In 1790, Classicism was, by far, the dominant style and relatively few Gothic examples were to be found. By 1840, Gothic was overwhelmingly the style of choice and Classical examples were rare. This half-century witnessed the real Gothic Revival, the battle for hearts and minds; by 1840, the new generation of Gothic advocates were pushing at an already opened door. The principal subtext of this chapter is, to a considerable extent, the rediscovery of Gothic as the perfect accompaniment for Anglican worship. However, in the move from Classicism to Gothic, explicit stylistic leadership could not be taken for granted.

Stylistic neutrality?

The Commissioners’ 1819 grant application form asked, ‘Whether the Church or Chapel to be Grecian and of what Order, or Gothic and of what century?’ Simultaneously, the Incorporated Church Building Society's Suggestions contained ‘Ornament, external … none preferable to the simplest Gothic. The Grecian Doric is also eligible’. These imply a clear, binary choice; they also imply some indifference to the question of style within the CBC and the ICBS.

Stylistic ambivalence is also apparent when new parochial chapels were financed by subscribers. Acts associated with their building often included words to the effect that the Trustees of such endeavours were to build the new church ‘in such manner as they think proper’, or in a ‘decent and commodious manner’. Similar neutrality is often found in contemporary publications which relied heavily on adjectives like ‘dignified’ and ‘neat’ to describe recent churches; redolent with ambiguity, they were actually remarkably useful.

The 1830s saw the building of a remarkable number of churches, especially in the second half of the decade. Using Gilbert's figures, 1831–41 witnessed the construction of an extra 785 churches, more than twice as many as in the 1820s and ten times the number from the first decade of the century. It was an impressive achievement. However, these additional places did not even keep pace with the increase in population, let alone address historical shortfalls in capacity. Thus there were continued calls for action. An 1837 article recorded the situation in ‘some of the manufacturing places’ around Manchester. For instance, in Bolton-le- Moors a population of 63,034 were still sharing just 8,600 sittings, and in Heaton Norris, Stockport, 11,283 had only 304 places. More generally, in 1836, the British Critic considered towns to be places of ‘ungodliness [and] intemperance’, repeating the language of Yates in his 1815 Church in Danger and suggesting only very limited progress had been made in the provision of additional accommodation. And others continued to see the threat caused by the spread of Nonconformity if additional churches were not built. Clearly much remained to be undertaken.

However, and very positively, one of the interesting aspects of the decade is that, unlike the previous 40 years, few doubted that more churches should be built or, significantly, that they should be funded from the pockets of those worshipping in them. Church building in the 1830s is not dominated by the campaigns of dynamic individuals, seeming to be battling against indifference or hostility, as was the case a generation earlier in the endeavours of the Revds Hammond Roberson, T. D. Whitaker or Richard Yates, encountered in previous chapters. Rather, one senses the 1830s saw steady progress towards a largely uncontroversial goal, although the advance was too slow for many. However, the need for economy remained paramount; the provision of seats was the overriding concern and if this meant the erection of churches of limited architectural ambition, this was often deemed acceptable, a pragmatic solution to a pressing problem. Indicative of changing attitudes is St Paul, Addlestone, Surrey (1836) (Fig. 16.2). Largely unmemorable, it is, nevertheless, notable as a design by James Savage who, only a decade earlier, had built the magnificent St Luke, Chelsea (see Figs 0.1 and 14.25), the most sumptuous of all the Commissioners’ Gothic churches.

This book has examined a range of outstanding churches, as well as many more modest ones. It has explored Classical examples as well as those in the Gothic, Romanesque – even occasionally Baroque – styles. It has catalogued half a century of remarkable building projects. It has also considered a range of associated social, economic and legal issues, and has revealed church building often in inauspicious circumstances. There were certainly citizens committed to providing more accommodation, but invariably their endeavours were challenging and often challenged. However, this text has examined a half-century of activity where many of these problems were ameliorated, if not entirely solved, and much was achieved. Church building in 1840 was in an infinitely better place than it had been in 1790; by the mid-1830s construction was taking place at an unprecedented pace and there was a widespread belief that the building of a new church was the responsibility of those who would worship in it, not that of government, the local squire or a group of investors. And the provision of huge numbers of seats for the poor – Anglican worship as an inclusive activity – was another significant achievement in this period. However, it needs to be recognised that the provision of free seats was, with few exceptions, only viable where a church could rely on a healthy income from rented pews to pay stipends and ongoing bills; the social divisiveness inherent in different types of seating was certainly recognised, but was widely seen as unavoidable.

A major theme has been that of architectural design and the way in which architectural decisions were inextricably linked to liturgical imperatives and functional efficiency. And ‘efficiency’ implied two qualities. First, the need to accommodate the congregation – often a very large one – so that all could hear and see the service, and be comfortable. Second, the design needed to convey the ‘right’ sort of messages, ones increasingly associated with Anglicanism's distant past, its traditions, notions of Englishness, and, crucially, ones that clearly differentiated it from anything suggestive of Roman Catholicism on the one hand, and Nonconformity on the other. Worshippers in this half-century recognised the ideal solution for those committed to the Established Church was an ‘Anglican Gothic’ to house its auditory worship, although the Victorians would have very different ideas.