ST MICHAEL’s, Twerton-on-Avon, Bath (right), has lost all its Victorian pews. The pews had been put into storage, from which they were sold unlawfully, and it is vitally likely that the loss is everlasting. The Consistory Court of Bath & Wells has granted a confirmatory faculty authorising the removal of the pews, but not their subsequent illegal sale.
St Michael’s is a Grade II* listed Victorian church with a surviving medieval tower and doorway. Its finely carved oak pews formed a part of an integrated ensemble of fittings and decorations dating from the reconstruction in 1885-86 by the architect E. W. Buckle.
On 30 May 2017, during a short lived minor reordering within the church, the then Archdeacon of Bath, the Ven. Andrew Piggott, granted a licence permitting the removal of the pews, subject to the condition that they were to be “stored safely and kept in good condition”. The licence was to run out on 31 August 2018.
In compliance with that condition, an arrangement was made with Bath Abbey — which was already storing quite a few pews in reference to its own reordering project — for the storage of the pews from St Michael’s. Initially, the pews from each sources were kept in an aircraft hangar, and so they were all subsequently transferred to a storage facility in Tormarten. The pews from St Michael’s, nevertheless, weren’t labelled as belonging to that church.
When the licence expired on 31 August 2018, the pews weren’t returned to St Michael’s as they need to have been. Therefore, from that date the absence of the pews from the church was illegal. There were, nevertheless, mitigating aspects for the failure of the parish to retrieve the pews. The parish had no incumbent, and the benefice had turn out to be vacant; Archdeacon Piggott had retired; and the pandemic had disrupted the life and work of the parish with the mandatory closure of St Michael’s for public worship. Hence the legal requirements were ignored, and contributed to the poor record-keeping and errors.
A more serious misfortune occurred in January 2022, when the staff at Bath Abbey wished to empty the storage facility and arranged for all of the pews in storage to be sold. Consequently, the complete stock of stored pews was sold to an Owen Thomas, of the Courtyard, Heather Farm, Bath, for what was described as a “donation” of £1500. Mr Thomas had proved to be elusive, and will now not be contacted at that address.
The Team Rector of the team ministry inside which St Michael’s is situated, the Revd Richard White, and Chris Tatchell, a churchwarden, applied for a confirmatory faculty for the removal and disposal of the pews and the transfer to Mr Thomas.
The Chancellor, the Worshipful Timothy Briden, said that “with the good thing about hindsight it will have been prudent to label the relevant pews as belonging to St Michael’s,” and that was one in all the “lessons to be learned” from this case.
The disposal of the pews to Mr Thomas with out a faculty was a breach of ecclesiastical law for which the staff of Bath Abbey appeared to have been responsible, but, since they weren’t parties to the proceedings, the Chancellor said that it will be “inappropriate to make conclusive findings against them of their absence”.
But “on any view of the matter, the unauthorised disposal was a wrongdoing,” the Chancellor said, and legal title to the pews within the hands of the final word recipients remained defective, in up to now because the transactions were in contravention of ecclesiastical law.
It was recognised that the prospect of reclaiming the entire set of pews was “effectively non-existent”, however the hope of recovering at the least a small variety of them and bringing them back to St Michael’s couldn’t yet be ruled out.
Therefore, a confirmatory faculty was granted, authorising only the removal of the pews. The disposal of the pews was not included in the college because, the Chancellor said, it will be “inappropriate to cover the incorrect which had been done with the cloak of subsequent legality”, and the disposal “must in justice be seen to be an illegal act”.
The Chancellor repeatedly emphasised “the importance of looking for the recovery of a small proportion of the lost pews in order that their workmanship could be enjoyed of their original setting”, and observed that way more could possibly be achieved by searching web sites and attempting to locate Mr Thomas.
A condition was attached to the college that the petitioners should “use their best endeavours to locate and to get well a sample variety of the missing pews”, and, if any were recovered, the petitioners must apply to the Consistory Court for directions. It was also a condition that a photographic record of the pews have to be kept with the church log-book.
