Yes, even in the quite populous countryside of NW Europe, each household would live within the radius of a defined number of neighbouring churches.

As others have said, it was only in the last 150 years or so, beginning with railways and the telegraph, we started measuring time in term of minutes instead of hours.

This would explain the remarkable number of discrepancies in the sources I am reading, regarding the timing of a single action; even the date, although I think that may be a ms. error.