Church Services and odd facts

Whenever I  think of church services it is usually when I'm writing, and usually  in a time period not my own. In a word, the services are not familiar to me as they would be for my characters. Until clocks were invented for the masses, folk told the time by listening to the ringing of church bells for services that went on throughout the day and night. They would recognise the position of the sun in the sky and how close to sunset and sunrise the day might be much better than we do today. I suspect our ancestors had a very good sense of time, far better than ours now we rely in clocks so much. 

 Prime, sometimes called Lauds, is the first service of the day after sunrise, the first hour, around 6am. This is followed at regular intervals by Terce, the third hour, Sext, the sixth hour, None, the ninth hour,Vespers and Compline, Compline being at 7pm in the winter and 8pm in the summer. No doubt monks went to bed after Compline because they had to rise and attend Matins, sometimes called Vigils,  two hours after midnight.  Once that was over they might manage another three hours sleep before rising for Prime.

The population of the UK was very low back then. In 1066  the history folk say England had between 2-3 million people, Ireland  under a million, Scotland and Wales  little more than half a million. The plague years knocked those numbers back quite considerably during the 1300s and into the 1400s and it was some time before the population made up those numbers and then began to grow.