The Pews

The pews are oak, 17th century, of Jacobean style.  They look as if they have been here for 400 years, but they were brought from a redundant church, St Catherine’s at Haydon, Dorset, in 1981.
 
St Catherine’s was built in 1883 and re-used older fittings at the time.  Nikolaus Pevsner said that St Catherine’s contained, as he put it, “some uncommonly handsome” 17th century pews.  They are here because when St Catherine’s was converted into a house the Churches Conservation Trust saved them.
 
Sir Nikolaus Pevsner was an authority on art and architecture and wrote a magisterial county-by-county series of 46 guide books called The Buildings of England.