The cover of the most recent Local History News (LHN) number 92, Summer 2009 includes a picture of an interesting 15^th century house. The location is Hallaton in Leicestershire and the building is the grey stucco and thatch one in the background, distinguished by steep pitched roofs and a bay window. It lies opposite the churchyard and near the former market-place. An earlier LHN cover illustration (Winter 2008) showed a similar building of half-timbered close-studded type – the Old School house at Stalisfield, Kent. This building, too, lies close to both church and manor house.   A third building was illustrated on page 232 of the 25^th anniversary issue of The Local Historian (November 2007). The 1840 sketch shows Deddington market-place and church. Between the market-house and church is a two-storeyed building with a pentice (to protect market stalls from the weather).   Only the southern half of this building appears to be shown and its back abuts directly on to the churchyard.

 

According to Charles Pythian Adams, who led the Hallaton group visit at the recent ‘Local History after Hoskins conference’, the first of these Tudor buildings includes a three-bay open hall of the guild of Corpus Christi. It is possible that this former market town originally had a separate two-storey church house, too. In smaller places guilds used church houses for their feasts and this led to the interchangeability of the terms church and guild house. Some parish and town houses may also have started life as church houses.

 

The other two examples cited above seem more likely to be church houses than the Hallaton one. Built for holding church ales and feasts in, and as a result raising funds for the church and its ornamentation, church houses were the prototype of the village hall. The pewing out of churches meant that an alternative indoor venue was needed for the whole parish to meet in. Play props and costumes for Robin Hood and his merry men were also stored in church houses. But the most surprising thing about church houses is how common they once were.    Every village south of the river Humber could have had one (the picture to the north is less clear and may reflect a north-south divide). 

 

My interest in church houses began about thirty years ago when I came across the term for the first time while researching my PhD thesis. I had chosen to work on a group of seven exceptionally well-documented parishes in the middle Thames Valley and found that every one had once had a church house and those at Bray and Cookham in Berkshire survived. 

 

The Bray example was built over a lychgate dated 1448 (in Arabic numerals), while that at Cookham was there by 1545 and this hundred year period appears to be when most church houses were first built (though in more Catholic areas building went on rather later). Of the other Berkshire parishes, Binfield’s church house was begun in 1517 and Sunninghill’s noted only at its demise in the 18^th century.  Records of the three Middlesex parishes yielded construction dates of 1525 and 1527 for Twickenham and Isleworth examples, with Heston’s church house first noted only in the 17^th century, by which time it had become a poorhouse. Measured building plots are noted in the case of Binfield in Berkshire and Isleworth in Middlesex showing that church houses were often built on reclaimed waste land. Often the only clue to a church house’s existence is the payment of an annual ground rent of a few pennies to the lord of the manor who had given the land. Such payments were not necessary  where the church house plot was cut out of the churchyard.

 

Part way through doing the thesis I moved to Cornwall to teach local history for the University of Exeter extramural department.  Devon, where I also worked, is the county par-excellence for church houses. Dispersed patterns of settlement with hamlet-sized church towns are typical of this county.  A number of Devon examples have helpfully become pubs called Church House Inns.  

 

Dendro-dating is pushing church house construction in the West Country as late as the time of the Prayer Book Rebellion.  When the vicar of Poundstock in Cornwall, Simon Morton, was hung in 1549 for supporting the old Catholic religion, the church house there probably had not been finished. Church ales were outlawed by Edward VI in 1548, brought back by Mary, tolerated by Elizabeth and in some places continued into the 17^th century and even up to the English Civil War which began in 1642.   A switch to church rates as a means of fund raising accounts for the demise of most church ales. Alternative uses were not hard to find for church houses and many had second lives as poorhouses, schools and pubs. Where schools were held in the old upstairs feasting room, poor people could be housed below. In the case of Poundstock the poor, including a one-legged man, eventually ousted the school children.

 

In pursuit of church houses I have visited numerous villages, sometimes on spec because of an indication in Pevsner, given talks, received information from the National Monuments Register at Swindon, scoured the Access to Archives web site, used original documents in record offices and antiquarian histories in the Institute of Historical Research and elsewhere.  The result is a continually growing card index of church houses and possible church houses.   Definite examples or documentary evidence for their former existence have now been found in 33 counties in England as well as in Wales. I am very keen to hear from anyone who knows of an existing church house or documentary references to one. I am also happy to supply information to local historians within reason.

 

Features to look for when trying to identify church houses include the following: churchyard or near churchyard location, outside steps and a first floor external door, pairs of external doors downstairs, a pentice, quality timberwork especially in roofs, smoke bays or fire places the width of the building (inglenooks for brewing).   Multiple fireplaces relate to later use as poorhouses, jetties, close-studding or ashlar masonry can also occur. 

 

 

References:

Joanna Mattingly, ‘Cookham, Bray and Isleworth Hundreds: A Study in Changing Local Relations in the Middle Thames Valley, 1422-1558’, London University PhD, 1993, p. 241.

P. Cowley, The Church Houses (1970) is a pioneering if old fashioned study.

For Devon church houses see G.W. Copeland articles in Transactions of the Devonshire Association 1960-7.