Gem From The Archive
Newport pew rentals, 1557-1797
Whisper it: there’s much more to Anglican church records than parish registers. While finding details of baptisms, marriages and burials is essential if you’re planning to trace an ancestor in the years before civil registration, it’s definitely worth delving into some of the lesser-used documents kept by churches.
One especially illuminating collection can be found at Isle of Wight County Record Office, as the manager of the island’s Heritage Service Richard Smout explains.
Which Records Have You Chosen?
I have chosen our collection of pew rentals for the borough of Newport, which span the mid-16th century to the late 18th century. Sometimes known as ‘pew books’ or ‘church books’, they’re essentially churchwardens’ accounts, which were compiled annually in book form.
The entries were written on blank sheets of paper, but what’s particularly interesting is that the covers protecting the pages were made from recycled property deeds. The 1591 volume pictured here, for example, is bound using a deed between a brewer named Henry Hudleston and the yeoman William Serle.
It doesn’t appear to have any relevance to church matters, so presumably the churchwardens knew a solicitor who wasn’t very good at writing deeds and was willing to let them reuse the ones that he had spoiled! Parchment would have been very costly, so this approach would have been a good way of saving money.
Why Were The Volumes Created?
The pew rentals recorded details of the church’s income. As the name of the collection implies, a main source of revenue came in the form of pew rents – the fees that locals had to pay in order to secure particular seats in the church.
This information was recorded by listing the name of each individual next to the annual costs for their seat, represented by vertical stripes in groups of 2d, 4d and 8d.
In addition, because the entries were arranged according to the geography of the church itself, we know exactly where people sat – the 1591 volume, for example, starts by listing pews “on the south side by the wall, beginning at the east end and so downward to the church door”.
Elsewhere in the records, we also find details of the one-off ‘entry fines’ that people needed to pay when they began renting for the first time, as well as payments known as ‘knells’, which funded burials and the tolling of the bells for funerals.
What Do They Reveal About Our Ancestors?
The pew rentals are incredibly useful. Not only are they rich with the names of local families, but because you know how much people were paying, you can get a sense of their wealth and social status.
During the 1680s, for example, a man named Sir William Stephens was paying 20s to rent what was effectively an entire pew, while there are also references to people who could only afford benches.
Furthermore, although Newport has reasonably good parish register coverage, the entry fines allow researchers to pinpoint exactly when a family first joined the community.
The main thing that researchers have to bear in mind when using the books, however, is that widows are the only women ever mentioned by name. All other women are defined by their husband – “William Siggers’ wife”, for example.
Interestingly, on the subject of gender, men and women were generally seated separately. The men were granted access to the best seats in the front and centre of the church, while the wives
The rentals are rich with the names of local families, and give you a sense of their wealth and social status
and widows would have been in the aisles or at the very back.
Do We Know What The Money Was Spent On?
Since Newport was originally a chapelry of Carisbrooke rather than a parish in its own right, and therefore wasn’t able to collect a church rate, there is evidence to suggest that it did become more affluent over time. Helpfully, the volumes include inventories and lists of annual expenditure, detailing the items in the church’s possession.
In the 17th century, for instance, we begin to see references to items such as grappling hooks and ladders, implying that the church was being used to store firefighting equipment. During the same period merchants were also starting to bequeath expensive items, for example church plate.
Regarding the latter, it must have been a challenge trying to balance the desire for having such lavish wares in your church while also trying to reflect the simplicity of Puritanism – a religious cause that Newport was sympathetic towards.
Tell Us About The Rest Of Your Collections…
Although we don’t hold any diocesan records (the Isle of Wight was originally part of the Diocese of Winchester, and then Portsmouth) or many records of quarter sessions (the island was governed by Hampshire until 1890), we hold other material that most family historians would expect to find in a county record office.
Specific highlights include records relating to the noble Oglander family of Brading, as well as the Royal National Hospital in Ventnor, for whom admissions were decided by a committee in London. The island was perceived as being a healthy place, so the hospital was used to treat diseases of the chest, such as tuberculosis.
There are also localgovernment records from the 1920s and 1930s that reflect the island’s status as a holiday resort, with papers about the licensing of beach entertainment and disputes with other resorts as to whether it was the sunniest!
Finally, we also have the 1936 overcrowding survey for Ryde, which measured the principal rooms in every property to calculate how many people could be housed there safely. This could be particularly useful if used