Sacred Mysteries: Why do they have to throw out the old pews from churches?

On Sunday November 1, All Saints’ Day, QC Auctions of Sandiway, Cheshire, sold a “characterful piece of ecclesiastical furniture suitable for a hallway, dining area or commercial interior”. It was a “substantial traditional wooden church pew removed from St James’ Church, Christleton ”. “All proceeds from the sale of this pew,” the auctioneers noted “will go towards the renovation work at St James’ Church.” To buy it would be “a lovely opportunity to acquire a genuine piece of the church while contributing directly towards its future”.

The pew or bench (we are talking about a bench with a back and ends, not an enclosed pew) fetched £32 and the vendor’s fees would have been £7. So St James’s would have got £25 towards the £600,000 it is raising for its renovation. The Rev Stefan Collier, Rector of St James’s, explains the project in an online pamphlet called New Beginnings . “We are proposing to develop the church building to place it at the service and centre of the communities for their flourishing,” he says.

The work entails an extension housing a kitchen and lavatories. “Whilst we honour the historic beauty of the church, in line with our Grade II* listing, fundamental change is required,” the pamphlet says. The pews were to be removed from the nave and replaced with chairs like those in Chester Cathedral , a brand called Icon 40. Of tubular metal construction with wood-finish seats, they can stack up to 40 high. An artist’s impression of the nave of St James’s without benches shows a group of people with their backs to the altar sitting on these chairs, joined by a man in a wheelchair while children play on the floor.

On the other side of the nave children play-fight with balloons. Not everyone is happy with the new arrangements. “I don’t think I shall ever go inside again as it will upset me too much,” says one parishioner. Opposition to removing pews or keeping them is not just a question of the look of things. But William Butterfield , who rebuilt St James’s in the 1870s, was a champion of benches with kneeling boards between them. He fiercely opposed the hassock, which “is always in different stages of decay, raggedness, and nastiness, and in town Churches at least, it harbours vermin.”

Butterfield had to accommodate top hats, which he demonstrated could be stowed beneath the bench in front without being kicked by the gent kneeling there. His attitude to benches stemmed from an opposition to words the doubtfully legal payment of pew rents that separated the rich and the poor.