Whether it be on buses, in cafés or in places of worship, some people undoubtedly have a favourite seat. This new volume is a detailed study of the obscurities of pew-renting in the Church of England’s churches and chapels. Some research on these rights has already been published in Church History and Religious Culture, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History and Anglican & Episcopal History by the same author. The broader context of the history of pew rents has also been discussed in W Whyte, Unlocking the Church, The Lost Secrets of Victorian Sacred Space (Oxford, 2017) and N Doe and S Coleman (eds), The Legal History of the Church of England, From the Reformation to the Present (Hart, 2024). This new volume is a welcome study of the practice of pew renting and records of churches and individuals involved.

Physical evidence of past pew renting is still present in many churches and chapels today, including the beautiful Grosvenor Chapel where the Society’s London Lectures are currently held. Bennett divides pew renting into two types: firstly, the ongoing formal renting of a specific pew, and secondly, the informal practice of paying a pew-opener to be shown to a pew week to week. All renting provided a steady source of income. The latest evidence Bennett offers for pew rents in England is from 1972, although he notes the practice still exists on Sark in the Channel Isles. There is limited consideration of proprietary rights to pews deriving from proprietary rights through prescription. Examples of older pew renting is presented by theme rather than strict chronology, and most of the volume is concerned with pew renting post-1818. Chapter 3 begins with the early nineteenth century legislation that led to growth in the practice of pew renting in the context of increased church building. Bennett estimates that more than half of mid-Victorian churches and chapels let pews. Bennett’s study of churchwarden accounts, pew rent books, vestry minutes and other broader correspondence and archives, largely focused on Kent and Bristol, suggest that the practice ‘rose steadily’ (p 51) in the nineteenth century particularly in urban churches, before falling away sharply in the early twentieth century, rising a little between the First and Second World Wars, and then dwindling away. The author suggests that the practice was always more common in ‘low-church or broad-church’ congregations (p 55). Chapter 4 explains the mechanics of pew renting including plans for sittings for new churches. Some details are fascinating: the positioning of free seats (the Blandford Act 1855 resulting in some churches being divided down the middle with free seats on one side and pew lettings on the other); the physical size of the sittings; the ancillary rights some pew renters enjoyed (from electing churchwardens to changing organists) and the practicalities of dealing with arrears (which impacted the incumbent’s income).

Bennett explores who was most likely to rent pews and aims to challenge traditional assumptions that it was the very wealthy. He argues that most formal sittings in churches were taken by those he describes as the ‘labour aristocracy’ and the ‘lower middle class’ (p 84), and suggests that being seen to rent a pew ‘conferred a degree of respectability’ and ‘allowed visual advertising of one’s business to local consumers’ (p 96). The samples of names and occupations in pew rent books on which these arguments are based are valuable and the author is correct that the usefulness of these sources stretches beyond genealogy. Evidence from these rent books (for example, the increase in female renters after the First World War) could also be tied to other studies of churchgoing. Later parts of the book consider informal pew renting where pew-openers received tips from wealthier church-goers at each individual church service before allocating a seat. Non-payers placed themselves in the free seats. Bennett describes the tips as ‘less a gratuity’ and more a ‘business transaction’ or ‘bribe’ (p 104). Drawing on contemporary published sources, Bennett considers the work of a pew-opener but recounts rather than interrogates the traditional age and gender associations of that role. Chapter 7 considers private renting of pews by individuals. Sometimes this occurred because a pew was not being used and was rented on. Other incidents raise unexplored proprietary questions such as payment by churchwardens to the owner of a private vault to use the pew above the vault. Of more significance were the speculators who invested in new proprietary chapels in wealthy locations and sought a return via pew rents. Bennett dates the first proprietary chapel to 1642 and estimates that nearer 200 were established by 1824. He considers the practicalities of establishing and running these chapels, noting that many chapels charged much higher pew rents in return for greater physical comfort and satisfying perceptions of more desirable company and preaching. The later chapters of the book consider the decline in pew renting in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Bennett suggests the final demise of pew renting was a result of the general fall in church attendance ‘which deprived churches of customers keen to pay for spaces of their own’ (p 156) rather than an outworking of any theological reservations of the practice. Churches gave up on pew renting as the schemes ceased to produce significant income. Where the incumbent had relied upon the schemes for income, alternative provision was made.

At the outset of the book Bennett says he seeks to provide a comprehensive account of pew renting that challenges some traditional perceptions, and this is achieved from a historical perspective. Legal historians may well have liked to see more consideration of associated legal cases, such as attempts to use pew rights to secure a right to vote and proprietary rights. The strongest parts of this book come from the author’s own detailed consideration of archives relating to churches in Bristol and Kent. Some other broader conclusions are reliant on wider secondary sources and some referencing and occasional imprecision may be frustrating for those wanting to study the sources further. Bennett’s work could be read alongside G Headley, Free Seats for All: The Boom in Church Building after Waterloo (Umbria, 2018) and T Cooper and S Brown (eds), Pews, Benches and Chairs (Ecclesiological Society, 2011). Bennett’s study is intended to be a historical one. However, explanations of pew rents do also help inform our current understanding of the contextual heritage of some of the urban churches that were built in the nineteenth century and seem so vulnerable to change and closure today.