Page:Church Seats and Kneeling Boards.djvu/14

Rh APPENDIX.

The following communications have appeared during the last twelve months in the pages of the Church Builder, the quarterly publication of the Incorporated Church Building Society. These communications are valuable, as they give the experience of clergymen who have Mr. Butterfield's Seats and Kneeling-boards in use in their Churches.

In an account of the rebuilding of the Church of S. Mary the Virgin, Ardleigh, Essex, the Vicar, Canon T. W. Perry, writes:—"Ardleigh Church was furnished throughout with the kneeling-boards and the corresponding seats which Mr. Butterfield recommends. The Vicar gladly avails himself of the opportunity now afforded to express his entire satisfaction with this provision for kneeling. The Church was consecrated by the Lord Bishop of S. Albans on August 9, 1883, so that the experience of two years and a half has enabled the Vicar fairly to judge of the plan: he did not expect that, where square pews and hassocks had fostered a general habit of sitting, open seats and kneeling-boards would in a short time induce a general habit of kneeling; but the practice is growing, and he does not find that the kneeling-boards are pleaded as an excuse by any who desire to kneel. These fixed kneeling-boards have, he considers, the further great advantage of preventing the disorder and untidiness caused by loose kneelers, and they much facilitate the regular and frequent cleanings of the Church. The Vicar has frequently heard commendation of the seats and the kneelers from those who have visited the Church, as well as from parishioners."

The Vicar of All Hallows, Tottenham, the Rev. Prebendary Wilson, in whose Church Mr. Butterfield's seats and kneeling-boards have been in use for the last ten years, writes thus:—"When these kneeling-boards were being put down in Tottenham