Welsh Journals

PEWS AND KNEELINGS. By W. H. Howse. THE above phrase occurs in various old Indentures (mainly of the eighteenth century) which I have examined relating to the transfer of house property in Radnorshire. Such pews and kneelings went with the rest of the property, and referred to the seats in the parish church to which the owner of the house had an inalienable right. This right was sometimes mentioned in advertisements of the sale of a house. Thus, in the Hereford Journal of 16th February, 1798, a notice of a forthcoming sale of Stockin Farm at the Radnorshire Arms Inn, Presteigne, mentioned that the farm had a Pew belonging to it in Norton Church." Again, a notice of the sale of the George Inn, Knighton, in 1807, concluded as follows There is a large Pew in the Church, opposite the Pulpit, which is an appurtenance to the above premises, and will go with the premises." The system of allocating pews or seats to houses was by no means peculiar to Radnorshire, but it may have lingered longer in this county than elsewhere. It would be interesting to know if there are any parishes where the system still obtains, whether in churches or chapels (for it applied to the Free Churches as well as to Parish Churches). I do not know of any such parish, but there are several in which I have found that the older inhabitants still associate certain pews with the houses to which they belonged. At Llanfihangel-nant-Melan the pews went by houses up to less than 25 years ago. In some churches it was the custom to put the names of the houses on the pew-ends. They may still be seen, in lettering perhaps of the 1850's or 1860's, in Llanfairwaterdine Church, just over the Shropshire border, near Knucklas, where only the seats in the north aisle were free. Names of houses remain, too, on some of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century box pews in Disserth Church. In this, left much as it was about the year 1720, there is a box pew at either end of the High Altar, which hardly accords with our ideas of to-day or with those of Archbishop Laud. The seats of these pews, like the rest of the seats in the church, face towards the three-decker pulpit, which was doubtless the centre of worship.