PARSONAGE HOUSES.
There is no reason to suppose that the houses of the parochial clergy
differed from those of lay people of corresponding income and social
position, except in the one circumstance that they sometimes had to
provide for the hospitality to travellers to which we will give special
consideration hereafter.
The house of a rector, from Saxon times downwards, would be very like that
of a lay lord of a small estate, but it is very difficult for us, with our
ideas of absolutely necessary domestic accommodation, to realize how rude
and simple were then the houses of people of comparative wealth and social
position. The house consisted mainly of one room. This room, the hall, was
oblong in plan, constructed, except in districts where timber was scarce
and stone easily obtained, of timber framework, filled in with wattle and
clay, with a lofty unceiled roof. The windows were few and high up in the
side walls, not glazed until comparatively modern times, but closed on
occasion with shutters; a stone hearth stood in the middle of the hall,
with iron fire-dogs on which the burning logs rested. In the better class
of houses there was a raised daïs at the end furthest from the door, with
a long rude oak table on it, and a single chair for the master of the
house behind it; there were other tables of boards and trestles put up
when needed, and taken away again when done with, and a couple of rude
benches and a few stools; there was a cupboard near the “dormant table,”
as Chaucer calls it, on which were displayed the pewter dishes, and horn
drinking-vessels, and in better houses, perhaps, a silver salt-holder, and
a couple of silver drinking-cups. When there was some pretension to
refinement, the roof-timbers would be moulded, the lower part of the walls
hung with tapestry, and rushes strewn on the floor by way of carpet; a low
screen of wood across the lower end of the hall at the same time made a
passage (“the screens”) through the house by which people might pass to
the back premises without disturbing the company in the hall, and warded
off the draught from the ever-open door. Any one of the hundreds of old
halls which remain in all parts of the country may serve as an
illustration of this general plan.
A separate building attached at right angles to the lower end of the hall,
and opening into the screens just mentioned, contained the cellar,
buttery, and kitchen, and might be prolonged to contain other offices, as
a brew-house, etc. Another separate building was attached at right angles
to the upper end of the hall, usually of two stories, with its gable to
the front; the lower story was often a storehouse, sometimes a “parlour,”
the upper story “the great chamber”--the special apartment of the lady of
the house, and the one retiring room from the promiscuous company in the
hall. This room had perhaps a bay window in its gable, and would be
furnished with tapestry, and a few stools, a spinning-wheel, a couple of
carved oak chests, and cushions in the window-seats.
As time went on, at the end of the thirteenth century, and in the
succeeding centuries, a greater refinement of domestic customs was
introduced, and other apartments were added.[144] In the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, the walls of the hall were built a little higher, and
an upper floor put in so as to convert the roof into a sleeping loft,
lighted by a couple of dormer windows; and this plan of a central hall
with a loft over, its longer side to the front, flanked by a two-story
building at one end with its gable to the front flush with the hall, and
another building at the other end of the hall containing the offices, was
the general plan of the houses of the middle classes of the people.
Thousands of them, more or less disguised by later additions, still remain
all over the country.
[Illustration: Plan of Rectory House, West Dean, Sussex.]
[Illustration: Rectory House, West Dean.]
Few of the old rectory houses are left in their original condition. There
is a good example of the hall at Weston Turville, Bucks.[145] The
parsonage house at West Dean, Sussex, of the thirteenth century, is
described and figured in Turner’s “Domestic Architecture.” It is built of
stone; in plan a hall with a story over it, and the soler at the upper
end, approached by a stone newel stair built in a projecting buttress on
the north side. The windows of the story over the hall are lancets, those
of the hall have a curious kind of tracery. The upper chamber or soler has
a good fireplace and chimney-piece of stone, with deeply splayed windows.
[Illustration: Pre-reformation Clergy House, Alfriston. (By kind
permission of the publishers of the _Builder_.)]
There is a parsonage house at Alfriston, within three miles of Dean,
Sussex, of the fourteenth century, so unchanged and well preserved that it
has been made over to the National Trust for Preserving Places of Historic
Interest. It has the usual hall, constructed of oak framing, the
interstices being filled with “wattle and dab,” open to the roof with
large cambered tie-beams and moulded king-posts. At the upper end of the
hall is the soler, of two stories.
[Illustration: Pre-reformation Clergy House, Alfriston. (By kind
permission of the publishers of the _Builder_.)]
There are others of stone at Congresbury (Somerset), King’s Stanley
(Gloucester), Wonstone (Hants.), Notgrove (Gloucester); of timber at
Helmsley (Yorkshire); and many others. And, just as many farmhouses which
were once small manor houses still retain their ancient mediæval features
disguised by modern alterations, so there are many parsonage houses in
which the original house of the fourteenth or fifteenth century still
remains, and may be traced by a skilful eye amidst the subsequent
additions.
We derive our fullest information about the old parsonage houses, however,
from literary sources, from the settlements of vicarages which describe
the old rectory house, or dictate how the new vicarage house shall be
built; from the old terriers which describe the then existing houses, and
from the inventories of wills which go from room to room, naming the
rooms, and detailing the furniture in them.
Thus a deed of 1356 describes the rectory house of Kelvedon, in Essex,
existing at that date--and how long before that date we do not know--which
the Abbot and Convent of Westminster, in the settlement of a vicarage
there, assigned to the vicar as his residence. The deed describes it as--
One hall situate in the manor of the said abbot and convent near the
said church, with a soler and chamber at one end of the hall, and with
a buttery and cellar at the other. Also one other house[146] in three
parts, namely, a kitchen with a convenient chamber in the end of the
said house for guests, and a bakehouse. Also one other house in two
parts next the gate at the entrance of the manor for a stable and
cow-house. He (the vicar) shall also have a convenient grange, to be
built within a year at the expense of the prior and convent. He shall
also have the curtilage with the garden adjoining the hall on the
north side enclosed as it is with hedges and ditches.[147]
The present vicarage house occupies the old site, and its offices,
gardens, and surroundings help to illustrate this description.
In a deed of Richard of Thornely, Chaplain of Wasseford, it is stated that
when he was presented by the Prior and Convent of Hatfield to the vicarage
of Silverley, he bound himself by his own free will to build a house
there, with a hall, a chamber, and a kitchen.[148]
In 1352, the Bishop of Winchester decreed that the Prior and Convent of
Merton, the impropriators of the benefice of Kingston-on-Thames, should
provide
a competent manse for the vicar, viz. a hall with two rooms, one at
one end of the hall, and the other at the other end, with a drain to
each, and a suitable kitchen with fireplace and oven, and a stable for
six horses, all covered with tiles, and completed within one year,
such place to remain to the use of the said vicar and his
successors.[149]
The deed of settlement of the vicarage of Bulmer, Essex, in 1425,
describes the vicarage house as consisting of--
one hall with two chambers annexed, bakehouse, kitchen, and
larder-house, one chamber for the vicar’s servant, and a hay-soller
(soler = loft), with a competent garden.[150]
Ingrave Rectory house is described in the terrier of 1610 as--
a house containing a hall, a parlour, a buttery, two lofts, and a
study, also a kitchen, a milk-house, and a house for poultry, a barn,
a stable, and a hay-house.[151]
Ingatestone Rectory house, in the terrier of 1610, is described as--
a dwelling house with a hall, a parlour, and a chamber within it; a
study newly built by the then parson; a chamber over the parlour, and
another within that with a closet; without the dwelling-house a
kitchen, and two little rooms adjoining it, and a chamber over them;
two little butteries over against the hall, and next them a chamber,
and one other chamber over the same; without the kitchen there is a
dove-house, and another house built by the then parson; a barn and a
stable very ruinous.[152]
Here we have an old house with hall in the middle, parlour and chamber at
one end, and butteries and kitchen at the other, in the middle of later
additions.
Mr. Froude gives an inventory, dated 1534, of the goods of the Rector of
Allington, Kent, from which we take only the incidental description of the
house which contained them.[153]
It consisted of hall, parlour, and chamber over the parlour,
stairs-head beside the parson’s bed-chamber, parson’s lodging-chamber,
study, chamber behind the chimney, chamber next adjoining westward,
buttery, priest’s chamber [perhaps for the rector’s chaplain[154]],
servants’ chamber, kitchen, mill-house, boulting house, larder,
entries, women’s chamber; gate-house, still beside the gate; barn next
the gate; cartlage, barn next the church, garden-house, court.
Here, again, we recognize the hall in the middle, the parlour and chamber
over it at one end, with an adjoining study on the ground floor, and a
chamber over it, as at Ingatestone, and at the other end the buttery,
kitchen, larder, mill, boulting houses, with a priest’s chamber, and a
servants’ chamber over it, women’s chamber over the kitchen, etc.; and we
observe that the additional chambers for the master of the house and his
family are grouped about the parlour and great chamber, while the chambers
for guests and servants are added to the kitchen and offices at the lower
end of the hall. These two projections backward would partially enclose a
courtyard at the back of the hall.
The rectory at Little Bromley, Essex, is described (1610) as--
a large parsonage house compass’d with a mote, a gate-house, with a
large chamber, and a substantial bridge of timber adjoining it; a
little yard, an orchard and a little garden all within the mote,
which, together with the circuit of the house, contains about half an
acre of ground; and without the mote there is a yard in which there is
another gate-house, and a stable, and a hay-house adjoining, also a
barn of twenty-five yards long, and nine yards wide, and about
seventy-nine and a half acres of glebe land.[155]
North Benfleet Rectory is described as consisting of--
a hall with a loft over it, two cross ends, with lofts and chambers, a
kitchen with a hen-house, a barn and a little stable at the end of it,
built in ancient time, a garden made, an orchard planned, a milk-house
and a dove-house.[156]
West Hanningfield is described as--
one dwelling-house tiled, having in it a hall with a loft over it for
corn, a closet in the hall, two butteries, with a loft over them for
servants’ lodging, an entry, a large parlour, with two lodging
chambers over it for servants, a study new built, also a kitchen
tiled, with a corn-loft over it, a boulting-house with a cheese-loft
over it, a brew-house newly set up, with a fair corn-lift over it, and
a garret over that, and a hen-house tiled at the end of it, a barn
newly built, and a porch thatched, a hay-house at the end of it, a
hogs’-coat boarded, a stable, a quern-house, two small cotes to fat
fowl in, a cow-house newly built, with a cart-house at the end of it;
another cart-house newly built with a room over it to hold hay; one
large hay-house with a cart-house at the end of it; another cart-house
newly built; a gate-house, wherein is a milk-house, with a loft over
it for cheese and fish; the site of the house and yards with two
gardens contains two roods.[157]
We easily recognize the normal plan of the house; the large accommodation
outside--some of it new--for carts and hay, and for the storing of corn
inside the house, indicates that the rector was farming on rather a large
scale.
* * * * *
We have seen in the foregoing description of the vicarage house at
Kelvedon, Essex, that a special chamber was provided for the
entertainment of guests, and at Kingston-on-Thames a stable for six horses
was attached to the vicarage house. This was no doubt needed because the
one was on the high-road from London into Essex, and the other on the
high-road from London into Surrey, and so westward, and the accommodation
was needed for travellers. In those times there were no inns at convenient
distances along the main roads of the country, nor even in the towns,
except in some of the largest. Few people travelled except on business, so
that hospitality was little liable to abuse; and travellers sought
entertainment for man and horse at the monasteries and the parsonage
houses.
It was regarded as a duty of the clergy to “entertain strangers,” and to
be “given to hospitality;” and the duty was fulfilled ungrudgingly,
without fee or reward, and entailed a heavy charge upon the income of the
clergy. One of the common reasons which a monastery[158] alleges for
asking the bishop to allow them to impropriate an additional benefice is
that their expenditure on the entertainment of travellers is beyond their
means; the country rectors, also, in their remonstrance against the
exactions of the popes, complain that they will be left without means to
fulfil their duty of hospitality;[159] and the matter is very frequently
alluded to and illustrated by examples in mediæval history. Off the great
roads, the rector would put an extra pewter platter and horn drinking-cup
on the board for an accidental passenger who claimed hospitality--he
brought his own knife, and there were no forks--and gave him a liberal
“shakedown” of clean straw, or at best a flock mattress, in a corner of
the hall. But, just as in the monasteries it was necessary to have a
special guest-house for travellers, so that they should not interfere with
the seclusion of the religious, so it would seem at the rectories along
the great roads it was necessary that there should be special provision
made for the frequent influx of guests. This is the explanation of the
chamber for guests at Kelvedon, and for the vicar’s six-stall stable at
Kingston.
* * * * *
It is clear that some of the rectory houses thus described were like some
of the smaller manor houses, enclosed by moat or wall, and the entrance
protected by a gate-house, and that the house contained all the
accommodation needed by a small squire.[160] But there were smaller
houses more suited to the means of a poor vicar or a parish chaplain.[161]
Thus, on the settlement of the Vicarage of Great Bentley, Essex, in 1323,
it was required that a competent house should be built for the vicar, with
a sufficient curtilage, where the parish chaplain has been used to abide.
At the settlement of the Vicarage of St. Peter’s, Colchester, the
impropriators, the Convent of St. Botolph, were required to prepare a
competent house for the vicar in the ground of the churchyard, where a
house was built for the parish chaplain. At Radwinter, Essex, in 1610,
there were two houses attached to the benefice, on the south side of the
church towards the west end, one called “the Great Vicarage, and in
ancient time the _Domus Capellanorum_, and the other the Less Vicarage,”
which latter “formerly served for the ease of the parson; and, as appears
by evidence, first given to the end that if any of the parish were sick,
the party might be sure to find the parson or his curate near the church,
ready to go and visit him.” There are little houses in some churchyards
which may have been houses for the parish chaplain. At Laindon, Essex, a
small timber-house is built on to the west end of the church.[162] The
Chapel of our Lady at Great Horkesley, Essex, has the west end walled off
and divided into two stories for a priest’s residence.[163]
[Illustration: Laindon Church, Essex.]
* * * * *
The question of dilapidations of the parsonage house and its dependent
buildings is not a matter of much general interest, but it was then, as it
is now, of much practical importance to the beneficed clergy, and it is
worth while to say a few words about it. We find examples in the episcopal
registers which we assume represent the universal practice.
In the register of John de Grandisson, Bishop of Exeter, June 21, 1328, a
commission was issued to inquire into the defects in the church and its
furniture and the manse of the Rectory of Lydeford, by the carelessness
and neglect of Stephen Waleys, late deceased. The commissioners were
laudably prompt in action, for, on the 4th July, they made their return of
defects, etc., to the amount of 42_s._; and the bishop at once issued his
mandate that the amount should be paid out of the goods of the defunct
rector.[164] There was a similar process in the same year at Didesham.