Taking Out The Pews

[poliphilo]

A couple of Sandwich's big medieval churches have been handed over to the Churches Conservation Trust and it's taken out the seating.

You put pews or chairs in a church and it becomes a space that can only be used in one way: performers at the east end, audience- seated passively- to the west. Remove  the seating and you create a huge, barn-like space- multifunctional, omnidirectional.  The aisles cease to exist, leaving the one, large room- unobstructed- squarer than it looked before- a basilica- broken up with pillars which no longer mark out a set of narrow pathways but simply support the roof.  The building has been democratized, taken away from the priests, its meaning opened up to interpretation.

Comments

[angiereedgarner.livejournal.com]

My home church burned and rebuilt this way intentionally when they had !money! and could have done anything.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It was the right choice (I think.)

[angiereedgarner.livejournal.com]

Summer attendance is very low so it lets them rotate the pulpit 90 degrees and have a small intimate church. :)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I was in York Minster a while ago when they'd taken the seating out temporarily, and it made an incredible difference. I was reminded of it in Hagia Sophia.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've seen Wells cathedral similarly stripped. It's a good look.

[artkouros.livejournal.com]

I read somewhere that churches didn't have seating until the 1500s.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think that's right.

[kishenehn.livejournal.com]

I like that a lot. Though I'm not a fan of most religious institutions, I do love the architecture that some of them have created ...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's my position too. I'm tired of religion (on the whole I think we'd be better off without it) but I love religious architecture.

[w. lotus (from livejournal.com)]

I never thought about it that way, but you're right.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Cheers.

[puddleshark.livejournal.com]

...The building has been democratized... Yes - that's it exactly. Churches become something else when the rank-and-file pews have gone.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The pews put the people in their place.

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

Back to pre-Reformation pattern, when there was only seating for nobility, except a bench along the side? There's an engraving - can't remember where - showing people standing, and prayer desks for a few

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I love those 17th century Dutch paintings of unfurnished churches with people wandering about in them.

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

PS I expect that people thought that they were democratising, when the pews were provided?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

They probably did.

The Victorians certainly thought they were striking a huge blow for liberty, fraternity and equality when they got rid of the box pews and put in benches.