The Church House was an ecclesiastical edifice which has now entirely passed away. I know nothing about the Church House except what is found in the _Archæological Journal_, vol. xl. p. 8. “Not a single undoubted specimen has been spared to us, though it is not improbable that the half-timbered building attached to the west end of the church at Langdon, in Essex, and now called the Priest House, is really one of these. We have evidence from all parts of the country that they were once very common. There is, indeed, hardly an old churchwarden’s account-book which goes back beyond the changes of the sixteenth century that does not contain some reference to a building of this kind. They continued in being and to be used for church purposes long after the Reformation. The example at All Saints, Derby, stood in the churchyard and was in existence in 1747.”... “We must picture to ourselves then a long, low room with an ample fireplace, or rather a big open chimney occupying one end with a cast hearth. Here the cooking was done, and here the water boiled for brewing the church ale. There was a large oak table in the middle with benches around, and a lean-to building on one side to act as a cellar. This, I think, is not an inaccurate sketch of a building which played no unimportant part in our rural economy and rural pleasures. All the details are wanting, and we can only fill them in by drawing on the imagination. We know that almost all our churches were made beautiful by religious painting on the walls. I should not be surprised if we some day discovered that the church-house came in for its share of art, and that pictures, not religious in the narrow sense, but grotesque and humorous, sometimes covered the walls. It was in the church-house that the ales were held. They were provided for in various ways, but usually by the farmers, each of whom was wont to give his quota of malt. There was no malt tax in those days, and as a consequence there was a malt-kiln in almost every village. These ales were held at various times. There was almost always one on the Feast of the Dedication of the Church. Whitsuntide was also a very favourite time; but they seem to have been held at any convenient time when money was wanted for the church.... Philip Stubbes, the author of the _Anatomie of Abuses_, only knew the Church Ales in their decline. He was, Anthony Wood informs us, a most rigid Calvinist, a bitter enemy to Popery, so that his picture must be received with allowances for exaggeration. His account of them is certainly not a flattering one. He tells us that ‘The Churche Wardens ... of every parishe, with the consent of the whole parishe, provide halfe a score or twentie quarters of mault, wherof some they buye of the churche stocke, and some is given them of the parishioners themselves, everyone conferryng some-what, accordyng to his abilitie; which mault beeyng made into very strong ale or beere is sette to sale,