Are you sitting comfortably? Let the sermon begin…

Did you know that, until around the time of the Reformation, people stood in church? To pray, they knelt on the stone floor. If you wanted a chair to sit on (the local gentry for instance) you brought it yourself and it wasn’t fixed to the floor. No comfort of a hard wooden bench let alone the privacy of a charismatic box pew with private door and lock.

For many years, attendance at church was compulsory. Under the Recusancy Acts (1558; officially repealed as late as 1888 although not enforced for some time) everyone had to attend or risk a fine or worse. Imagine the ordeal of the infirm and elderly standing throughout an entire service.