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Bowes villagers ranked by pew
Feb 13, 2008
In 1703 there was written in Bowes Register an instruction
to the parishioners as to where each of them should sit in church. This pew
plan was an official document decided upon by commissioners and the original
‘returned into the office at Richmond, according to the Tenour of the said
Commission for a Regulation of the Pews in the church of Bowes'.
John Pears was curate of Bowes church in 1703. He was at Bowes from 1694 until his death in March 1725. The Church of England in which John Pears served was solidly Protestant. And despite wars against Spain and France and wariness over Scotland, the England of 1703 was a safer and more stable society than it had been for many a long while. For the first time, many ordinary people could read and write and newspapers were starting to appear. Within the churches, preaching the word was the most important part of services and books were becoming a part of everyday life. In 1701, John Pears wrote in the register the titles of the books that were kept in the church. William Hutchinson, one of Teesdale's great benefactors, had given two of them to the church. You can't imagine him giving books to the church unless at least some of the parishioners could read them.
The standard of living of Teesdale families appears to have improved during this time. One sign of this was the rebuilding in stone of houses up and down the dale. Life for dalesmen and women must have become significantly more comfortable. Dare we say that life became softer? Maybe it was part of this same pattern that led to people wanting to sit rather than stand during church services - resulting in churches all over the country filling up with seats.
Society still, however, revolved round one's social class. Social class mattered whatever you were doing - and that included attending church. So, the higher up the social scale you were, the nearer to the front of church you would want to sit. But who decided who sat where? If it had been left to the parishioners themselves you can imagine all sorts of disputes. And as for leaving it to the vicar - well that doesn't bear thinking about.
So, strange as it seems to us, commissioners were appointed who didn't live in the parish but whose decisions would be respected. At Bowes the commissioners included the incumbents of Grinton, Barningham and Romaldkirk and were headed by Thomas Waite. He was described as ‘Armiger in Legibus Baccalaureus' - a Knight Bachelor in Law - presumably he was lawyer. The fifth member of the panel was the clerk.
The commissioners' word was law. They decided who could sit in each of the pews in the church. Sometimes instead of a person's name they wrote the name of a farm. There were evidently 47 pews in the church, 24 on the north side and 23 on the south. Most of the pews lay either side of the central aisle but some were in the north and south porches. You wouldn't see much from these porch pews because they faced inwards.
The most important pew was at the front. And the whole front pew on the north side was allocated to a Mr Charles Whitell. He also had the whole of the second pew on the south side behind the pew reserved for the parson's wife and the schoolmaster. Who was Mr Charles Whitell? There are a lot of Whitells recorded in the registers at this time. They were clearly an extensive family. They lived at many different addresses including Gilmonby, Forelands, Hudson Close, Dike Heads and Bowron. Not all the Whitells were well-to-do. For instance, in 1718 when Christopher Whitells from Gilmonby was buried, he was described as a pauper. In August 1720 Mr Charles Whitell of Gilmonby Hall was buried, so Gilmonby Hall must have been where the ‘most important person' in Bowes Parish lived.
If Mr Charles Whitell was the most important person in Bowes in 1703, then who was the least important to be allocated a seat? It's difficult to decide which were the least favourable seats in the church. Perhaps these were the back pews, given to George Sayer, Matthew Stodard, John Denham, Margaret Buckle and George Stodart on the north side and to Ann and Elizabeth Dent, Thomas Pearson, Christopher Binks and Alice Bowes on the south side. However, you could at least see from these pews. So maybe the back seats in the north and south porches were the least attractive. Interestingly, a Thomas Whitell senior occupied one of the seats in the back pew of the south porch. So members of the Whitell family could well have occupied both the highest and lowest places in Bowes' society.
There are many old Bowes family names to be found in the pew plan - lots of Sayers and Kiplings, Laidmans, Coates and Dents. Some names are linked to the farms they occupied such as Thomas Laidman of Redmire, and Thomas Kipling of Melwaters. Farms allocated seats include Bargapp, Pryrigg, Ling Road, and Kilmonwood. Do you recognise some of these names? Most of the houses are still there - with the exception of Gilmonby Hall - but how about the families? Are any still living around Bowes?
First published in the Mercury February 6, 2008