Because Durham parishes have left no churchwardens' accounts it is more difficult to reconstruct some aspects of the activities of lay people in its parishes than it is in some other parts of the country. To try to reconstruct lay concerns from churchwardens' accounts alone, however, may lead to serious misjudgements and wrong emphases. The laity were not responsible for the whole church. What is left in churchwardens' accounts is an edited version of what was presented; there were other officials apart from the churchwardens; and many gifts, for instance, may never have come into the accounts at all. In Durham one has the opposite problem. The parishes belonging to the priory accounted through a procurator to the obedientiary who ‘owned’ them. The procurator only included items for which he had to answer to the rector (the obedientiary and ultimately the prior). Thus lay concerns, for the nave of the church or for many gifts for instance, were not included, nor, usually, were parish festivities which would have been financed by the laity. These can sometimes be discerned, usually when the prior authorised an unusual payment for them. Nonetheless it is possible to say something about the role and activities of the laity in the ordinary church life of the city.

The parishes had churchwardens and sometimes, though rarely, we can give names. We can take it that they oversaw the parts of the church for which the laity were responsible according to church law, including the nave.