CHURCH HOUSE, LINCOLN
Parish meetings not unfrequently settled local disputes. Thus at Canterbury in 1485, at St. Dunstan’s, there was some dispute between the parish and a man named Baker, and the churchwardens spent 2½d. on arbitration. Later on, two families fell out, and the vicar and four parishioners met in council, heard the parties, and put an end to the difficulty.
A parish, with all the great interests involved in its proper management, required some place where parish meetings could be held. They were sometimes, no doubt, held in the aisle of the parish church, but this arrangement was for obvious reasons inconvenient, and a Church house became a necessity. Its existence was apparently almost universal. At Hackney, for instance, the parish built a house in which to hold meetings. At Yatton, in Somerset, in 1445, the people subscribed to the building of their house; at Tintinhull, in the same county, one was completed in 1497; but in 1531, another was erected to take the place of the older one, and Thomas, Prior of Montacute, helped the parish with a donation of twenty shillings.
The Church house was sometimes let out to tenants and for various purposes, with a reservation of its use when necessary for parochial meetings. Thus, at Wigtoft, the rent of the house brought in a regular sum of money to the churchwardens. At Straton, in the county of Cornwall, it was let on occasion; as, for instance, in 1513, the accounts show a receipt of 8d. “of Richard Rowell for occupying of the Church house;” and of 12d. “of the paynters for working in the Church house.” At the annual fair time the Church house was let to wandering merchants to display their goods. At St. Mary’s, Dover, in 1537, an item of parochial receipt was, “one whole year’s farme of the churche house in Broad St., 5 shillings.”
Sometimes there was land belonging to the parish, which was let together with the house; as, for example, at Cratfield, where, in 1534, an acre of land was let with the “Church house.” Very probably this was the land on which subsequently the parish shooting-butts were erected. If there were receipts to the parish, there were, of course, also expenses for repairs to the common house, which in some accounts appear to be very frequent, and which shows probably that it was much used. In one or two instances there seems to have been two floors to the house, and in one of these instances these were let out separately, one of the two tenants being a woman.
In many cases it is clear that cooking was done on the premises for the parish meetings. In some Wiltshire accounts there is evidence of this, and of utensils of various kinds being kept in the house for parochial feasting and for ministering to the poor. The householders made merry and collected money for church purposes, and the younger people had dancing and bowls in many places, “while the ancients sat gravely by.” At St. Dunstan’s, in Canterbury, there were two dozen trenchers and spoons, and one annual dinner is mentioned.
Dr. Jessopp thus speaks of these Church houses—
“Frequently, indeed, one may say usually, there was a church house, a kind of parish club, in which the gilds held their meetings and transacted their business. Sometimes this Church-house was called the Gild hall; for you must not make the mistake of thinking that the Church houses were places of residence for the clergy. Nothing of the kind. The Church house or Gild hall grew up as an institution which had become necessary when the social life of the parish had outgrown the accommodation which the church could afford, and when, indeed, there was just a trifle too much boisterous merriment and too little seriousness and sobriety to allow of the assemblies being held in the church at all. The Church-house in many places became one of the most important buildings in a parish, and in the little town of Dereham, in Norfolk, the Church-house or Gild hall is still, I think, the largest house in the town. When the great fire took place at Dereham, in 1581, which destroyed almost the whole town, the Gild hall or Church house, from being well built of stone, was almost the only building in the place which escaped the terrible conflagration.”