Again, parishioners from outlying districts were expected on high festivals to attend morning and afternoon services at their mother church. In licensing a chapel at Smallhythe in 1509 “on account of the badness of the roads and the dangers which the inhabitants underwent from the waters being out,” Archbishop Warham was careful to stipulate that the people of Smallhythe were not thereby released from their duties at the parish church of Tenterden. Some accommodation was necessary where those coming from a distance could rest and have their midday meal during the interval between High Mass and Vespers. At Lurgashall, in Sussex, there is a very ancient closed porch of wood extending the whole length of the South aisle which local tradition declares to have been built for this express purpose. Perhaps also the large parvise to the west of the tower at Boxley, like in form to the antechapels in the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, was a shelter of this kind. Mr. Baring-Gould thinks that the deep porches in the French cathedrals were intended to shelter the peasants during the midday hours. But by the fifteenth century the increase in the standard of comfort would demand an inn, rather than these exposed and draughty places for shelter.
Church Ales were a special institution of the mediæval Church to the intent that no parishioner by reason of poverty should lack the means of feasting to his heart’s content on the greater holy-days; all were to assemble and make merry together. “In every parish,” says Aubrey, in the introduction to his “Natural History of Wiltshire,” “there was a Church House, to which belonged spits, crocks, and other utensils for dressing provisions. Here the housekeepers met. The young people were there, too, and had dancing, bowling, shooting at butts, etc., the ancients sitting gravely by and looking on. All things were civil and without scandal.” Whitsuntide was the great feast of early summer before haymaking began, and so these feasts were popularly known as Whitsun-Ales, but Easter and Christmas were not forgotten. From an old Breton legend we learn incidentally that it was customary for the three masses of Christmas to be said consecutively by anticipation, after which all adjourned for a gorgeous feast in the neighbouring Church House. Sometimes two parishes united for the celebration of the Church Ale. In Dodsworth’s manuscripts there is an old indenture preserved, an agreement between the parishioners of Elveston and Okebrook, in Derbyshire, to brew four ales, and every ale of one quarter of malt between Easter and the feast of St. John the Baptist; every inhabitant of the two parishes to attend the several ales. Charitable folks bequeathed funds for the maintenance of these parish banquets on particular festivals.