Notwithstanding that the parish was instituted primarily for ecclesiastical objects, the people quickly came to understand the utility of the organization for common and social purposes. Although it was not till well into the sixteenth century that any successful attempt was made to impose by law upon the parishioners, as such, any purely secular duty, such as the care of local roads and bridges, or the repair of ditches, dykes, and sluices, the people’s wardens had long before this assumed the superintendence of all the common parochial amusements, and in some instances of works, such as brewing and baking, etc., undertaken for the common benefit or profit. These probably mostly sprang out of their necessary management of parochial property, which had a natural tendency to grow in extent, and in particular of the “Church House,” which in one form or other most parishes possessed. The _Church House_.--Mr. J. M. Cowper, in his preface to the _Accounts of the Churchwardens of St. Dunstan’s, Canterbury_, gives a useful description of the purposes for which the _Church_, or, as it was sometimes called, the _Parish_, _House_ existed. In the fifteenth century, and indeed before that, the church was the real centre of all parochial life, social as well as religious. “From the font to the grave the greater number of people lived within the sound of its bells. It provided them with all the consolations of religion, and linked itself with such amusements as it did not directly supply.” [Illustration: CHURCH HOUSE, LINCOLN] Parish meetings not unfrequently settled local disputes. Thus at Canterbury in 1485, at St. Dunstan’s, there was some dispute between the parish and a man named Baker, and the churchwardens spent 2½_d._ on arbitration. Later on, two families fell out, and the vicar and four parishioners met in council, heard the parties, and put an end to the difficulty. A parish, with all the great interests involved in its proper management, required some place where parish meetings could be held. They were sometimes, no doubt, held in the aisle of the parish church, but this arrangement was for obvious reasons inconvenient, and a Church house became a necessity. Its existence was apparently almost universal. At Hackney, for instance, the parish built a house in which to hold meetings. At Yatton, in Somerset, in 1445, the people subscribed to the building of their house; at Tintinhull, in the same county, one was completed in 1497; but in 1531, another was erected to take the place of the older one, and Thomas, Prior of Montacute, helped the parish with a donation of twenty shillings.