Prior to the nineteenth century, impoverished Manx parishioners were not provided with the same seating facilities as those perceived to be of higher social status. In 1727, when the seating was regulated in the rural parish of Santon, the poor were
allocated the steps of the font to sit on.71
However some Manx parishes did pre-empt Cambridge Camden Society prescriptions by providing limited free seating within their churches. In 1781, the newly-built chapel of St George’s in Douglas reserved thirty of its 1,300 seats for the
poor.72 Although this probably reflected the large numbers of
destitute in the town rather than empathy and perceptions of equality, by around 1823 the Church Building Society made a donation of £300 to the new chapel being built in Castletown ‘on
the understanding that a certain number of seats should be free’.73
An 1826 ground plan of St Paul’s Chapel-of-ease in Ramsey
showed sixteen free pews at the rear of the nave.74 When the
seating for the new St Peter’s Onchan was regulated in 1829 three
nave pews were allocated for use by the poor.75When the rural
new Ballaugh Church opened in 1832 a free seat provided directly under the pulpit reiterated widely-shared Protestant ideals that
everyone should be able to hear the sermon clearly.76At the same
time St Barnabas’ Church in Douglas designated 500 out of its
1500 available seats as free.77The 1839 Act of Tynwald that allowed
for the building of St Jude’s chapel-of-ease to Andreas stipulated
that one third of the seats be free.78Rural St Mark’s chapel-of-ease
in the parish of Malew had designated three pews as free by
1840.79
In July 1844 Bishop Short dealt with the problem of free seats often being positioned in the worst places inside churches by signing a regulation that ensured pew openers in St Paul’s Chapel- of-ease in Ramsey placed ‘strangers in any seats not occupied at
the end of the reading of the Psalms, before the Lessons’.80And
when a new church was built at St John’s in 1849, all the sittings,
in un-numbered benches, were free.81
Benches were sometimes appropriated as if they were pews. Numbered benches were installed in old Ballaugh Parish Church when it was renovated in 1849 (Fig. 1) although the numbers were scratched off at an unknown later date (Fig. 2).The 1871 Act of Tynwald that allowed for the building of the new Braddan church stipulated that churchwardens allocate seats according to parishioners’ claims in the old church, even though the new
building was fitted out with bench seating.82To facilitate this, each
bench was supplied with a slot for a name-card on its aisle side (Fig. 3). The numbered benches in St German’s Church (Fig. 4)
were probably installed c. 1903 because a storm in February of
that year destroyed parts of the roof which fell down onto and
smashed many of the pews.83
Nine (20%) of the forty-nine Manx churches listed on the
diocesan website still have numbered pews or benches.84 For
example, at St Thomas’ Parish Church in Douglas, numbered pews (Fig. 5) continue in use.At a PCC meeting held on 14 November 1967 it was agreed that rather than remove the name-card holders from those pews (Fig. 6), those concerned would be approached individually to elicit whether users would agree to others sitting in those pews. On the other hand, in Kirk Andreas, where pews were converted into benches by the simple removal of the pew doors (Fig. 7), the re-use of the pews, and the retained numbers may have represented local economic constraints rather than continued designated seating. This was probably the case in Lezayre too, because when the nave pews were replaced with, or modified into, un-numbered benches at an unknown date (Fig. 8), the numbered pews in the west gallery (Fig. 9) were not removed.
When St Olave’s was built in Ramsey in 1862 it was perceived as being ecclesiologically correct, but even here the benches were numbered and supplied with slots for name cards (Fig. 10).
Another aspect of the allocation of seating was the occasional provision of complimentary and cut-rate seating. For instance, in return for the land on which the new Ballaugh Church was built in 1832 Thomas Corlett of Ballaterson and his heirs were granted a free pew in church besides that belonging to their farm, as marked, along with the family’s second pew further down the
nave, on an 1832 seating plan.85When Captain Bacon donated the
land that St Stephen’s Sulby was built on in 1838, he was allocated a pew as large as the prestigious Ballakillingham pew in the old Lezayre church.This caused logistical problems later in the latter, when the liturgical arrangements were re-oriented and the pews replaced with benches.
The Manx practices described also took place in England and Wales. This suggests conservatism is a human rather than particularly Manx characteristic, although there is more evidence
that the trend was firmly entrenched in Man.86