In the colonial period, Connecticut residents were required by law to attend all-day church services on Sunday. Meeting Houses were unheated and a mid-day break allowed people to eat and warm up before the afternoon services. For those who lived too far away to return home during this break time, towns sometimes built small “Sabbath Day Houses” where they could take shelter. Several Sabbath Day Houses were once located on Durham Green, but were taken down as the attendance requirement ended at the start of the nineteenth century. One surviving structure, built around 1780, was moved to Indian Lane in Durham and converted into a residence. Facing destruction in 1966, it was moved back to the Green and restored by the Durham Historical Society.
A description of Durham’s Sabbath Day Houses is related in William Chauncey Fowler’s History of Durham (1866) as follows:
These houses were from twenty to twenty-five feet in length, and from ten to twelve feet in breadth, and one story high with a chimney in the middle dividing the whole space into two rooms with a partition between them, for the accommodation of two families, who united in building the house. The furniture consisted of a few chairs, a table, plates and dishes; some iron utensil, it may be, for warming food which had been cooked. Besides the Bible, there was sometimes a book on experimental religion, like Baxter’s Saints’ Rest, or Allein’s Alarm. On the morning of the Sabbath the mother of the family with provident care, put up her store of comforts for the dinner, substantial or slight fare as most convenient, a bottle of cider almost of course. The family then set off from their home in a large two horse sleigh, or on saddles and pillions. They stopped at the Sabbathday house, kindled a blazing fire, and then went forth “to shiver in the cold during the morning services.” At noon they hurried back to their warm room. After they had taken their meal and by turns drank from the pewter mug, thanks were returned. Then the sermon came under review, from the notes taken by the father of the family, or a chapter was read from the Bible, or a paragraph from some favorite author, the service concluding with prayer or singing. After again visiting the sanctuary, the family would return to the Sabbath-day house if the cold was severe, before they sought their home. The fire was then extinguished, the door was locked, and the house remained undisturbed during the week.
In time the custom of repairing to these houses changed; the houses themselves became dilapidated or furnished a refuge for the poor. They were better suited to those times when so much was thought of private family religion, than they would be to ours, when religion has become more of a public and social concern. The last Sabbath-day house which I remember, stood on the land owned by the first minister. It was occupied by John King, a Hessian deserter from the British army. It was owned by one of the Nortons. The present writer can recollect as many as half a dozon of these houses. They grew up out of the type of religion which existed at that time. It was a family religion, rather than a public one.