St. Bridget’s church has a remarkable variety of pews, although it must be said that comfort was not the foremost thing in the minds of the craftsmen who made them.
From the 1600s through the mid 1800s, people sat according to their position in life. The rich were near the chancel and the poorer people were, the further away they sat. It mirrored the Christian view held through that period that poverty was a God-ordained plan for creation.
As Mrs Alexander wrote in her well-known hymn “All things bright and beautiful”
“The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
He made them high or lowly
And ordered their estate”
The pews in St. Bridget’s church include two examples of elaborately carved box pews dating to the sixteenth century. The earliest example is the Morgan Pew of roughly 1564.The second appears to be made from pieces of pew and is now known as the minstrel’s pew
The heavy -
Pine pews from1855