BUSHBURY CHURCH

Church Customs in the 18th and 19th Centuries

Some notes, made by P.T. Hinckes the elder in a book in the Bushbury Manor Papers at Hereford Record Office (Box 10 B47), throw some light on some of the practices in the church in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

"Byshbury September 26 1812.

Abraham Aston, Parish Clerk of Byshbury (now 73 years of age) informed me that on the interment of any of the Horton's family of Moseley in the North Chancel of Byshbury church application has always been made for permission to the Lord of the Manor, and on leave granted, the sum of 13s-4d paid to the P. Lord, and further that himself was sent by Mrs. Horton (now living) to request permission of the late Mr. W. Huskisson to bury her husband there, (about the year 1787) and that he afterwards received the fee of 13s-4d for Mr. Huskisson and paid it to him.

Same time, Abraham Aston told me that the pulpit was shifted from the south side of the middle aisle to the north (where it now stands) about sixty years ago since which time, the Inhabitants and servants of Bushbury Hall have always gone to and returned from the Communion Table to their own pew through the clerk's pew, and Leacroft pew, without molestation, and Miss S. Corser informs me that her mother and the family always used the same way. Abraham Aston thinks that formerly there was only a bench where the clerk's pew now is, but of this he is not certain. N.B. On Good Friday April 16th 1813 Myself went to and returned from the Sacrament to the Byshbury Hall pew, through the Leacroft and clerk's pew. P. T. H.

He likewise told me that Mrs. Gough of Oldfallings (Grandmother of the present J. Gough Esq.) sometimes came to church, in her carriage through the field on the south side of the church (heretofore called the Vicarage piece) from the old Vicarage house formerly standing at the N.W. Corner of it: but this by sufferance (as he believes) on payment of a small sum annually he thinks 2s-Od or thereabouts.

Plantation on Byshbury Hill, and that behind the house made in Spring 1813."

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