Pull up a pew? Every millennial home needs one – just don’t ask where it came from

Good luck to the Somerset church that sold off its Victorian benches by mistake and now wants them back. As every millennial homeowner knows, ‘salvaged’ furniture is the ultimate status symbol, says Claire Cohen

Paint by numbers: the classic millennial home contains ‘a Victorian nursing chair, William Morris curtains, a mid-century dining table, and various items made from reclaimed planks’ (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Have you ever played “millennial apartment bingo?” The idea – according to the shopping list of shame that went viral a few years ago – is that, if your home contains items such as an Eames chair, a mid-century sofa or vintage bar cart, it’s a giant interiors cliche… and you were probably born between 1980 and 1996.

I’d add a few items to update that list, because, in the last couple of years, Victoriana has been slowly creeping into the homes of my millennial friends. Think solid brown furniture, from linen cabinets to dressers, William Morris fabrics and wallpapers, antique tablecloths and oak benches, the likes of which sit around tables in open-plan kitchen-diners across the nation.

Whether any have found their way there from St Michael’s in Bath is likely only to be spoken of in hushed tones.

The church is hoping to recover 22 of its carved 19th-century pews, which were “accidentally” sold off after being put into storage – in what has been deemed a breach of ecclesiastical law by the church court, and downright sacrilege by heritage groups. The benches were removed in 2017 to allow a new carpet to be laid and were then forgotten about – until a new archdeacon requested to see them and was told they’d been disposed of, in an apparent “record-keeping error”.

The entire set was flogged for £1,500 – which is enough to trigger any millennial who has paid upwards of £500 for a single pew for their home.

If the church is hoping to appeal to the good natures of my generation to get a few pews back… well, godspeed. You’re more likely to get us to answer the phone when it rings.

I might not own an oak pew myself (always on the lookout) but my home contains a Victorian nursing chair, William Morris curtains, a mid-century dining table and record cabinet, a music hall gramophone and various items made from reclaimed planks. The vintage parquet floor we had laid – at eye-watering expense – was, our builder said, taken from “an old school hall…” and declined to be drawn any further on the subject.

Would we return any of these items should the need arise? Would we heck.

Hours have been spent trawling auction websites and secondhand markets for such salvaged treasures, with great jubilation if one happens to stumble across an apparent bargain or “unique” piece. Never mind that it’s the 15th G-Plan dresser they’ve sold that day.

The farther you cast your net, the more individual you can claim to be, and the more likely you are to show off your finds (millennial-speak for overpriced bric-a-brac) on Instagram. Where did I get that vintage mirror? Oh, just some little brocante outside Marseille, sorry… Plus, they help us polish our sustainability halos; bonus points if it used to belong to your grandparents.

In the absence of owning our own homes, these things are our status symbols. We’ve all heard the stats by now – just 10 per cent of homeowners in England are under 35 – but even if we don’t have our names on the deeds, we can still decorate our living spaces to feel characterful and homely. And, let’s face it, buying a Victorian church pew is a lot more affordable than current mortgage rates.

In any case, judging by the responses online, many parishioners aren’t all that keen to have their pews back, and have replaced them with chairs, moveable after services to create a community space in the church hall. “Uncomfortable” doesn’t cover it. Just ask all the millennials with lower-back problems.