Seating is key to the way a church building is used. If you’ve ever thought about making changes to the interior of yours then there’s a good chance that your plans have involved alterations to the seating. Many church interiors were designed and built to suit styles of liturgy and patterns of use very different from those practised by today’s worshipping communities.
Seating needs to serve well a practical function and of course it has to be fit for purpose. Yet it is often an integral part of the original fabric. Changes to historic seating have in the past caused controversy, enough for the removal of the pews from Ambridge church to be a storyline in ‘The Archers’ a few years ago! But while there isn’t always a straight answer to questions such as ‘Is it all right to take out the pews?’ neither is the general advice in every situation ‘Hands off!’
If you’re applying to the Diocesan Advisory Committee (DAC) to carry out a reordering scheme then start by taking a look at the guidance on Statements of Significance and Need. A lot of the general points there about background research and justification apply to reordering schemes as well. But, that said, proposals involving church seating are something of a special case and deserve to be dealt with in detail. This advice sheet is a supplement to that general guidance to help you produce a strong application to the DAC. This is a big document because seating in churches is a surprisingly big subject. If you have limited time then read just the first five sections. But if you can, it’s worth reading the whole thing because taking the time to produce a well planned, comprehensively justified scheme at the outset will save you a great deal of trouble later on.
The needs you seek to address will be specific to your parish, so it is impossible to be prescriptive with advice, apart from one vital point: it is essential to have the rationale for the scheme clear in your mind. For this reason it makes sense to work on the Statements of Significance and Need before you bring in an architect. This will help you to formulate a brief for him or her. Here are a few of the commonly cited shortcomings of historic seating that prompt parishes to undertake reordering schemes:
These can be useful starting points around which to construct your Statement of Need and many of them will be familiar to members of the DAC. There are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ justifications, but it is vital to argue your case well – see Section 5 for more advice on this – to be sure about what you want to achieve and what its benefit will be to the congregation (and, perhaps) wider community. Know what the needs are that you wish to address before trying to apply any pre-conceived solutions. That way, even if the one that you eventually propose proves contentious, the DAC can help to suggest alternative ways of achieving the same ends. There are very few churches where no change is possible at all. If you are dealing with an architecturally significant interior and are worried that there is little scope for change then here are a few suggestions for ways in which you can accommodate it. Take heart – there’s often more room for manoeuvre than you might think!
Consider engaging the DAC and external consultees before you commission any detailed designs if you’re worried about possible controversy. They will help to identify where there is room for change.
Before you make any detailed plans it’s vital to study the existing seating in your church as this will help you to work out what you can do with it. Seating is often passed over with barely a mention in descriptions of church buildings unless it is really exceptional, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not significant. See Appendix 1 for some historical background, which will help to set the seating in your church in its context. It’s important to look at the provenance of the seating – when it appeared, who designed and made it and how it was used. It’s strongly recommended that you talk to your QI architect when writing the Statement of Significance as he or she may be able to provide extra information that you won’t find from any other source. Assessing the importance of seating is about more than just dates and names of designers. Here are some points you might find it helpful to consider when researching your Statement of Significance:
If you’ve decided to reseat all or part of your church then the next thing to do is to work out what sort of furniture you’re going to use to replace them. Think about how it’ll look in the building, how it’ll perform and whether it’ll meet your needs. Here are some of the points to consider that may help in guiding you to a decision.
Occasionally applications that ought to succeed run aground during the approval process because the rationale is unclear or the supporting documentation is not sufficiently comprehensive. The following tips will help to prevent that happening to you.
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Here are some examples of reordering projects which have involved either alterations to or the complete replacement of historic seating schemes. This will give you some idea of what can be achieved. It’s important to remember that there are no standard solutions – a reordering proposal must always be guided by the specific needs of your parish and the design must be a considered response to your building. For that reason, these examples are not offered templates to be followed. But they do show that there is room for manoeuvre even in architecturally sensitive interiors.
You can find illustrations of all these projects – in most cases both ‘before’ and ‘after’ views of the church concerned on our Flickr photostream. Hover your cursor over each one to get the caption to display on the screen.
This fine church has a long and complex building history. In the 1890s and 1910s the old medieval and Georgian village church was massively expanded to accommodate a population boom (it was then a fast-growing suburb), becoming the south aisle of a new building by Sir A.W. Blomfield. When the decision was taken to reseat the building care and tact were essential. Although the existing mixture of chairs and pews was not of especial intrinsic significance, it was important as part of the setting for very important and spectacular fittings – G.F. Bodley’s rood screen with later painted and gilt decoration by Sir J.N. Comper and the organ loft and case, wholly by Comper. Both nave and chancel were reseated with benches by Luke Hughes and Company. As shown by the illustrations, the manufacturer provides wheeled handling dollies to make moving the benches around easier. The benches can also be stacked for storage when areas of seating need to be cleared.
Built in 1932, this church was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, famous for being the architect of Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, Tate Modern, Battersea Power Station and the K2 telephone box. It was originally seated with wooden chairs, replaced in the 1960s with pews. In a recent reordering scheme a new floor with underfloor heating was installed and initially the pews were retained, but the limitations that they placed on flexible use of the space prompted a decision to reseat the church with Howe 40/4 stackable metal-framed chairs. The worship space under the large central lantern tower is seated with chairs arranged in rows – the 40/4 chairs can be linked together to form straight ranks – while the choir stalls and clergy seating in the chancel, which are of the same vintage as the pews, have been retained. The narrower nave forming the rear portion of the building, where a servery has been installed, is largely free of furniture, save for some cafe-type and soft seating.
The reseating of this church was undertaken as part of a much larger project. St Andrew’s was originally built in 1873-4 to designs by Newman and Billing, but was extended and much enriched in the 1890s and 1900s by, among others, Aston Webb – the architect of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the main front of Buckingham Palace. In the 1970s the west end of the nave was crudely partitioned off to create a church hall. Under the reordering project the later Victorian, westward extension of the nave was demolished and replaced with housing. A new, largely glass structure housing community facilities and ancillary accommodation was erected at the west end of the nave. The whitewash was removed from the walls to reveal the original coloured and patterned brickwork, the pews were removed and the floor replaced. The church was reseated with a mixture of benches and chairs from the Rosehill Furniture Group. A nave altar is used and the chancel fittings and embellishments by Harry Hems and Sons have been left intact.
Built in 1870-7, this church was designed by William Butterfield, a nationally important Victorian ecclesiastical architect whose best known work is All Saints, Margaret Street in the West End. Indeed, after that building this is reckoned to be his best church in London. It also has important fittings from the 1920s by Martin Travers. In 2010 a plant from Holy Trinity Brompton was established at the church. It shared the building with the existing congregation, but introduced very different styles of worship and wished to diversify the use of the building. It quickly became obvious that this was incompatible with the retention of the pews. Permanent removal met with strong resistance from the Victorian Society, however, because of the significance of these fittings, which were original to the church and designed by Butterfield. Eventually a compromise was struck by the DAC: the original pews would be retained in the Lady Chapel and two more would be retained at the rear of the nave. Movable wooden chairs would be used for congregational seating, but mixed in with these would be twelve Butterfield pews, reduced in length. Christened ‘pewettes’, they now seat just two people, but, thanks to this alteration and to the fact that they are no longer fixed to the floor, can easily be moved around when the layout needs to be reconfigured. This is necessary on a regular basis: the interior is cleared of seating so trestle tables can be set up for a drop-in centre for the homeless and the chairs are rearranged around a central focal point for informal services in the round, as shown in the illustration. But a traditional, east-facing layout is still used twice a week for Holy Communion and also for events with a speaker. When it is, the ‘pewettes’ ensure that something of the presence of the original pews remains. They also help to articulate the mass of new seating with which, sanded and revarnished, they now harmonise. The chancel stalls have been left intact and are used by the professional choir that leads worship at the sung Eucharist on Sunday mornings. Only three ‘pewettes’ are shown in the illustrations here; the remainder are still being assembled.
One way of making a pewed church flexible without discarding all the original seating is to mount the pews on castors. The pews at St George’s (Arthur Blomfield Jr, 1908) are not especially remarkable, having been made to a design used widely in churches of around this date, but they were worth retaining for two reasons: i) they were all that remained of the original seating following removal of the choir stalls in the 1980s and some of the aisle pews; ii) they were well made and durable. The wide base plates meant that the pews could be mounted on castors without being at risk of overbalancing or making them too high to mount comfortably. Here are the relative pros and cons of this solution as summarised by the Revd Christopher Ramsay, the vicar of St George’s.
Unusually for a town church of the end of the 19th century – designed by Basil Champneys, it was built in 1897-9 – St Luke’s was seated with pews rather than chairs. Recently the building has undergone a number of substantial alterations, including the conversion of the crypt into accommodation for a Church of England free school, in order to make the building better fit for purpose and more sustainable. A reordering was carried out, under which the nave was reseated with Winchester chairs from Alpha Furniture. The aisles were largely cleared, although several pews, now free-standing fittings, have been retained in both of them as a representative sample and for overspill seating. The pews were simply screwed to a woodblock floor, so no alterations to this were required beyond repair of the surface. At the same time the font – a good quality original feature – was relocated to the east end of the north aisle so the former baptistery area at the west end of the nave, which had latterly been used as a storage area, could be turned into a servery. Two large partitions with inscriptions commemorating the First World War dead at the west end of the nave were removed to unblock sightlines and remade into a single memorial board which was placed close to the font in its new location. Large, bespoke storage cupboards, stained to match the original fittings, were erected in the aisles. The fine, original ensemble of chancel fittings with its intricately carved choir stalls has been kept intact.
Carrying out a comprehensive, radical reordering of an architecturally highly significant church can be fraught, but the bold approach taken here has paid dividends and both parish and building have benefited as a result. St Mary’s was originally built in 1735-40 on an ancient site, but little of the Georgian fabric apart from the shell of the nave and the tower survived a bold and comprehensive recasting by S.S. Teulon in 1866-74. The interior was redecorated in 1955 and some reordering was carried out in the 1980s, but by the end of the 20th century the interior was looking gloomy and the layout made worshippers at the back of the church feel distanced from the celebrant. As part of the reordering project the interior was cleaned and redecorated, reinstating the vivid original colour scheme but in lighter tones. The dark varnish was stripped from the gallery fronts to aid the general effect, although it was left on the gallery pews, which were retained, as were the elaborately carved choir stalls in the chancel. All the congregational seating at ground level was replaced, however; the pews were removed, the wooden pew platforms were taken up and the floor relaid with stone paving, incorporating a large, two-stage dais. This is used for leading services from the east end, although the flexibility of the layout also allows for worship around a central altar as seen here. Luke Hughes benches were used for the congregational seating; the same firm also provided the bespoke Holy Table, portable font (the original one was moved from the baptistery to the west lobby in the 1980s) and lectern. The spaces flanking the west lobby were screened off to provide accommodation for the parish office.
Historic fittings are usually viewed as being every bit as much of integral significance to a church building as the fabric itself. But in the past fittings have migrated from church to church and, in rare cases, this still happens today. Built in 1849-53, St Matthias was designed by William Butterfield, just like St Augustine, Queen’s Gate. But unlike that building, it has not survived intact; shattered by bombing in World War II, it lost its original fittings. When the church was restored in the 1950s, replacements were installed that, while dignified, were alien to the spirit of the architecture. The opportunity to replace them arose when another major church by the same architect – St John’s, Glenthorne Road in Hammersmith (Grade II*, 1857-9) – was made redundant. That building was lucky enough to gain a sustainable new lease of life thanks to conversion into a performance space for neighbouring Godolphin and Latymer School. But retaining the complete set of original fittings was, unfortunately, out of the question. The granting of listed building consent for the conversion project was contingent on a new home being found for them. The Parish Property Support Team suggested to the vicar of St Matthias that they be transplanted to his church and this was done.
Almost all of the original seating in the nave and aisles of this church, an important early work by J.L. Pearson of 1863-4, was removed probably in the 1980s and replaced with wooden-framed, upholstered chairs. By 2010 they were life-expired – the joints had worked loose and the upholstery was faded, worn and frayed. The overall impression was tatty and unworthy of a splendid building. The seats were replaced with a mixture of Howe 40/4 metal-framed chairs and all-wooden chairs from Irish Contract Seating. The latter are available with armrests, can be stacked for storage and can also be linked together in straight ranks.
The history of seating in churches is an enormous topic and the subject of a recent survey by the Ecclesiological Society. But that is something that is the province of specialists and you probably won’t have time to go into it in such detail. The following notes are intended to give you a brief overview of how seating in English churches has changed over the centuries and to help you to work out how that in your church fits into this story.
The big dividing line in the history of church seating is between pre-Victorian and Victorian or post-Victorian seating. There are few seating schemes from before the Victorian age in the Diocese of London. This is because of natural wear and tear, disasters such as the Great Fire and the Blitz, and also because of the enormous changes in liturgical practice in the 19th century, which led many parishes to reorder their churches so that they could be brought into conformity with them. Moreover, as a result of the immense and rapid growth of London in the 19th and 20th centuries there are simply numerically more churches of this date. For these reasons, the rarity of pre-Victorian seating schemes means that where they survive they are of great value and so there is a strong presumption against any major change. But this also means that if you are thinking of reordering your church there is a strong likelihood that this will involve alterations to 19th or 20th century seating.
In the early Middle Ages people would have stood while attending Mass. Benches began to appear in churches from around the 13th century onwards, but most surviving pre-Reformation pews date from the 15th and early 16th centuries. In wealthy areas such as Norfolk and Somerset they were sometimes very elaborately adorned, but often they are relatively plain benches, such as those in the nave at the Middlesex village churches of St Mary, Harmondsworth and St Mary Magdalene, Littleton. At the latter church there is also medieval seating in the chancel – an even greater rarity.
The emphasis on preaching and the Ministry of the Word resulting from the Reformation increased the importance of providing seating for worshippers. Around the early 17th century box pews appeared – pews with high backs and sides and doors, which completely enclosed worshippers. These provided protection from draughts and also were a means of demarcating the space belonging to a regular worshipper – from the late 16th century it was possible to obtain rights to a particular pew through the grant of a faculty, payment of rent or continuous long-term use. The churches in the City of London rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren and his associates after the Great Fire of 1666 were seated with box pews, sometimes very elaborately adorned with carving, especially those for civic dignitaries and churchwardens. Good examples survive at St Mary Abchurch near Bank. Architectural styles changed, but seating churches with box pews remained standard practice well into the 19th century. Not many box pews survive in an unaltered state and complete sets – such as those at St Lawrence, Little Stanmore and St John’s Wood Church – are extremely rare and highly significant.
The impact of the changes that took place in the Anglican Church in the 19th century, particularly as a result of the influence of the Oxford Movement, was so extensive that very few churches in England do not display at least some traces of it. The religious ferment and architectural polemic that gave rise to these changes can seem very strange to us today, yet they produced popular conceptions of how a church should look that still endure. These notions were widely propagated and ran counter to established practice at the time. Box pews were regarded as unsightly and unsuitable for new forms of churchmanship. It was thought that they encouraged unbecoming behaviour in church.
There was also a drive to abolish pew rents. The Incorporated Church Building Society gave grants for repairing and reseating churches. These were proportional to the number of free places provided and so there was sometimes a strong motive to over-seat them. In some parishes clergy adopted ritualistic practices in an attempt to combine Anglican worship with revived aspects of the medieval Catholic Mass. Seating had to be provided not just for worshippers in the nave but also for a robed choir in the chancel. Yet whatever the tradition of churchmanship almost everywhere box pews in existing churches were cut down or removed and replaced with open benches. Naturally these were also used in the hundreds of new churches that went up at this time. Later on framed wooden chairs, sometimes with rush seats, became popular.
Victorian seating schemes are so numerous that careful study and discrimination are necessary to establish their significance. Some architects were very particular about how they wanted their churches to be seated and detailed instructions survive setting out their wishes; others less so. At one end of the scale there are bespoke schemes, often by nationally important architects and conceived as an integral part of the interior. Sometimes these are significant pieces of design in their own right and executed to a high standard of craftsmanship. At the other there are plain benches mass-produced to standard designs – ‘catalogue pews’, as they are sometimes known. So it is difficult to give any general guidance about Victorian pewing: some of it offers plenty of scope for change, while some of it is so significant that there is as strong a presumption against major alterations as in the case of pre-Reformation seating.
The effects of 19th century thinking were so pervasive that church interiors carried on being furnished in a similar way well into the 1930s. Many manufacturers of catalogue pews carried on production of their lines to the same designs, although the use of chairs became more prevalent for congregational seating. But radical changes were afoot. The influence of Modernism prompted architects to move away from historical prototypes in architecture and design, often dispensing with ornament. The liturgical movement in the 1950s emphasised the need to bring the celebrant into the midst of the congregation and to break down the division between clergy and worshippers that most church design until then had reinforced. Seating, however, continued to be provided in the form of pew-like benches, albeit of much simpler form than that of preceding centuries. Some architects carried on working in a historicist vein, however, particularly when carrying out reorderings of older buildings or restoring the numerous churches which had been gutted in bombing raids during World War II. All the comments about assessing the significance of Victorian seating apply to 20th century seating as well – careful study and discrimination are essential here.
