CHURCH INNS AND CHURCH ALES
We had occasion a year or two ago to visit a small country town where
several public-houses were scheduled previous to being closed under the
Licensing Act. It was impossible to defend the continuance of the
licences. The high road which ran through the lower part of the town was
well provided with inns for the passing traveller. These condemned inns,
nine or ten in number, were all in a side street leading to the church at
the top of the hill. We inquired of a local antiquary, an enthusiast on
the subject of inns, whether he could account for the existence of so many
in a situation apparently ill-adapted for a prosperous trade, and received
a surprising explanation.
[Illustration: Porch, Chalk Church, Kent]
“They loved God in those days,” muttered the old gentleman, with a sigh of
regret, “and loving God each man loved his brother also. In the church
they learnt the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven; the public-house gave
them the opportunity of realising the Kingdom of Heaven in the practice
of brotherly love. It is a survival of the early Christian Agape.
‘Exercise hospitality one to another,’ says the Apostle--for this is the
full meaning of προσλαμβάνεσθαι in Romans xv, 7. In the good old days men
did not go into a public-house to drown their wits in gin, but to buy each
other good wholesome ale in Christian fellowship. And as every man went to
church--of course, there had to be many alehouses!”
We have since discovered a less picturesque though much more plausible
origin of these superfluous inns which will be given in another chapter.
Nevertheless, allowing for our good friend’s flamboyant enthusiasm, there
is an element of truth in his contention. Wherever there is a church we
may be certain of finding an old inn hard by. In pre-reformation times the
Church, while not exactly countenancing the alehouse, looked not sourly on
drinking customs when indulged in with discretion. The training of the
character in self-restraint is a great ideal of the Catholic Church. The
alternation of festival and fast is one integral feature of the process.
Fasting alone is insufficient. Continual abstinence results in
self-mutilation; the appetite is merely distorted thereby. It is a great
secret of the higher life that where there is no temptation there can be
no victory. And so the Church enjoined on our forefathers the duty of
feasting heartily and fasting conscientiously each in their due season. A
great doctor of the Church gave the maxim that to be fasting after the
fifth hour of a holy-day was to be _ipso facto_ excommunicate.
Before inns became common the parish clergy were expected to entertain
travellers. It must be borne in mind that until the thirteenth century
many of the secular priests were married men. The Rolls of Parliament for
1379 contain a complaint that owing to the non-residence of the clergy
this duty of affording shelter to benighted wayfarers was in danger of
lapsing. In our own boyhood it was still the traditional custom for
travellers in remote districts to put up at the rectory, and this may help
to account for the unnecessary size of rectories in sparsely populated
country parishes. But obviously the unmarried priest of the fifteenth
century found it more convenient to all parties when an inn was built on
his glebe, where it would be more or less under his control, and he could
be answerable for its good conduct.
Again, parishioners from outlying districts were expected on high
festivals to attend morning and afternoon services at their mother church.
In licensing a chapel at Smallhythe in 1509 “on account of the badness of
the roads and the dangers which the inhabitants underwent from the waters
being out,” Archbishop Warham was careful to stipulate that the people of
Smallhythe were not thereby released from their duties at the parish
church of Tenterden. Some accommodation was necessary where those coming
from a distance could rest and have their midday meal during the interval
between High Mass and Vespers. At Lurgashall, in Sussex, there is a very
ancient closed porch of wood extending the whole length of the South aisle
which local tradition declares to have been built for this express
purpose. Perhaps also the large parvise to the west of the tower at
Boxley, like in form to the antechapels in the colleges at Oxford and
Cambridge, was a shelter of this kind. Mr. Baring-Gould thinks that the
deep porches in the French cathedrals were intended to shelter the
peasants during the midday hours. But by the fifteenth century the
increase in the standard of comfort would demand an inn, rather than
these exposed and draughty places for shelter.
Church Ales were a special institution of the mediæval Church to the
intent that no parishioner by reason of poverty should lack the means of
feasting to his heart’s content on the greater holy-days; all were to
assemble and make merry together. “In every parish,” says Aubrey, in the
introduction to his “Natural History of Wiltshire,” “there was a Church
House, to which belonged spits, crocks, and other utensils for dressing
provisions. Here the housekeepers met. The young people were there, too,
and had dancing, bowling, shooting at butts, etc., the ancients sitting
gravely by and looking on. All things were civil and without scandal.”
Whitsuntide was the great feast of early summer before haymaking began,
and so these feasts were popularly known as Whitsun-Ales, but Easter and
Christmas were not forgotten. From an old Breton legend we learn
incidentally that it was customary for the three masses of Christmas to be
said consecutively by anticipation, after which all adjourned for a
gorgeous feast in the neighbouring Church House. Sometimes two parishes
united for the celebration of the Church Ale. In Dodsworth’s manuscripts
there is an old indenture preserved, an agreement between the parishioners
of Elveston and Okebrook, in Derbyshire, to brew four ales, and every ale
of one quarter of malt between Easter and the feast of St. John the
Baptist; every inhabitant of the two parishes to attend the several ales.
Charitable folks bequeathed funds for the maintenance of these parish
banquets on particular festivals.
[Illustration: Church House, Penshurst]
Just above the western door of Chalk Church, near Gravesend, squats carved
in stone a grotesque goblin figure, cross-legged and grinning with a most
jovial expression as he grasps a flagon of ale. Charles Dickens in his
latter years never omitted to stop and have greeting with this comical old
monster. Now, this sculpture commemorates a _give ale_, bequeathed by
William May, in 1512, that there should be “every year for his soull, an
obit, and to make in bread six bushells of wheat, and in drink ten
bushells of malt, and in cheese twenty pence, to give to poor people for
the health of his soull.”
After the Reformation the Church Ales were continued, chiefly in order
that the Churchwardens might by the sale of the liquor secure funds for
the repair of the fabric. “There were no rates for the poor in my
grandfather’s days,” says Aubrey. “But for Kingston St. Michael (no small
parish) the Church Ale of Whitsuntide did the business.” Abuses rapidly
crept in. Stubbs, the author of the “Anatomie of Abuses,” complains in
1583, that the ales were kept up for six weeks on end, or even longer. In
the West of England instances are related of the South aisle of the church
being filled with beer casks and men busy supplying all comers. The sale
of liquor went on during morning service greatly to the disturbance of the
officiating minister. Bishops’ injunctions, ecclesiastical canons, and
orders of the justices fulminated vainly against the degenerated Church
Ales. Not till the time of the Commonwealth were they finally abolished.
[Illustration: The Punch Bowl, High Easter]
Bishop Hobhouse traces the growth of the Church House into a regular
tavern at Tintinhull in Somersetshire. First, there was a small bakehouse
for the making of the _pain bénit_. In time this had developed into a
bakery supplying the whole neighbourhood with bread. From brewing ale for
Church festivals, the brewhouse undertook the regular sale of malt liquor;
and it was a very profitable business for the churchwardens; so that
municipal trading was not quite unknown in the olden time.
The only examples of an undoubted Church House that we have come across
are the “Church Loft” at West Wycombe, in Bucks, and the exquisite
half-timbered building over the Lych Gate at Penshurst. The _Castle Inn_
at Hurst, in Berkshire, is traditionally known as the Church House. The
bowling-green behind this inn is one of the best in England and of great
antiquity. There are many inns and other old houses near churchyards which
probably began their career as Church Houses; the half-timbered “Priest
house” at Langdon, in Essex, and the long plastered and tiled tudor
structure over the porch at Felstead, opposite the _Swan Inn_, and
formerly used as the Grammar School, may both be of this category. The
_Punch Bowl_ at High Easter is actually in the churchyard; its interior
framing--a marvellous piece of joinery--and the richly-moulded beams show
it to have been built at the same time as part of the church, perhaps by
the same craftsmen. By the way, Mr. James Stokes, the landlord for many
years of the _Punch Bowl_, a worthy, good-hearted man, was in size the
nearest rival of Daniel Lambert we ever met. His huge proportions were not
by any means due to indolent habits. He was a thatcher by trade, and
noted in the district for his activity and skill.
[Illustration: The Punch Bowl, High Easter]
In the absence of documents it is not easy to discriminate between the
Church Inn and the Church House. Old inns near the church bearing
ecclesiastical names may be of either origin, or may have served for both.
The _Bell_ is very common all over England. It is always found near the
church, and the sign is of the highest antiquity. Chaucer tells us that
the _Tabard_ in Southwark was “juste by the Belle.” The _Bell_ at Finedon,
in Northamptonshire, puts in a claim to be one of the very oldest in the
country, and the old _Bell Tavern_ which formerly stood in King Street,
Westminster, is mentioned in the expenses of Sir John Howard, Jockey of
Norfolk, in 1466. At the _Bell_, in Warwick Lane, died the good Archbishop
Leighton in 1684. “He often used to say that if he were to choose a place
to die in, it should be an inn; it looks like a pilgrim’s going home, to
whom this world was all as an inn, and who was weary of the noise and
confusion in it.... And he obtained what he desired.”[8]
Not unusual in this situation is a _Lamb Inn_. The _Lamb_ at Eastbourne
has a small but well-proportioned crypt, vaulted and groined. There is a
_Lamb and Flag_ near the old parish church at Brighton, Sudbury, and at
Swindon; and a _Lamb and Anchor_ in Bristol. These owe their origin to a
carving of the _Agnus Dei_, but may sometimes point to a house of the
Knights Templars, for the _Agnus Dei_ appeared on their coat of arms. The
_Bleeding Heart_ is an emblem of the five sorrowful mysteries of the
Rosary, and the _Heart_, generally found as the _Golden Heart_, is in
honour of the Blessed Virgin. The _Anchor_ is suggestive of a church inn,
but we have not been able to trace a house bearing this sign to any very
remote period. At Hartfield, there is an _Anchor Inn_ close to the church,
evidently ancient, and having a delightful old-fashioned garden. It was
formerly occupied by a church institution where the poor were fed and
housed in return for such labour as their age and skill would permit,
founded by the Rev. Richard Randes, a rector of the parish some two
hundred and fifty years ago. The house contains evidence of having existed
long before this date.
At least one church has, by the vicissitudes of time, become an inn; the
_George Hotel_ at Huntingdon, itself very old and picturesque, enshrines
in its cellars and lower walls all that is left of St. George’s Church.
The stones of St. Benedict’s Church in the same town were used two
centuries ago in building the _Barley Mow Inn_ at Hartford, and some
figures and panelling may be seen in the tap-room of the _Queen’s Head_,
close by where this church stood. At the _Old Red House_, about four miles
north of Newmarket on the road to Brandon, the bar-counter is formed out
of the rood-screen turned out of the neighbouring church at a
“Restoration” about five-and-twenty years ago.
In a corner of Romford churchyard a fifteenth-century chantry-house,
founded by Avery Comburgh, Squire of the Body to Henry VI, and
Under-Treasurer to Henry VII, became after the Reformation the _Cock and
Bell Inn_. Through the kindness of Messrs. Ind, Coope & Co., the present
Bishop of Colchester was enabled to regain possession for religious uses,
and after three hundred and sixty years of alienation this building, still
possessing its original oak ceiling beams and panelling has been converted
into a Church House for the parish, and a hall for meetings, corresponding
in style, has now been added from the design of Sir Charles Nicholson,
Bart.
Among the pleasantest memories of a pilgrimage to Walsingham, is that of a
Sunday spent at a little Suffolk village, where after service Pastor and
flock alike adjourned to our inn for a half an hour’s gossip. The old
custom would be difficult to restore nowadays, but much of the social
influence of the Church over the labouring classes was lost when rectors
left off occupying, at least once a week, the chair in the village inn
parlour. For it is not without good reason that church and inn stand so
frequently side by side. Each ministers alike to the natural and common
needs of man, and each in its own way has its lesson to teach us in the
gospel of the larger life. They have stood together through the ages as a
protest against the wayward theories of man-made puritanism; for they
belong to the Commandment which is “exceeding broad.”