What sort of house?

[Tonysmedley]

There has been an outburst of “Escape to the Country” programmes on TV of late.
Amongst the houses shown there are often those which were once vicarages; they are often very big, far bigger than most normal dwellings.
During my lifetime there has been a great change in the standards of living of most C of E clergy.
I am reminded of this by a boyhood memory.I was a Grammar School boy, from a comparatively humble background compared with most of the rest of the pupils, who were paid for by their parents; I was a “scholarship” boy.
A new vicar was appointed to a rural parish a few miles away; he and his wife wanted their small son to go to the Grammar School, but even the fee payers had to pass a (very easy) entrance exam. For reasons I was not aware and do not fully understand even today, it was somehow arranged that I, who was good at mathematics, should teach the young boy enough to get him through the exam. I was to be given a small reward, but was not happy with the arrangement. But I was pressurized into taking on the job.
So it came about that I cycled the few miles to the village and turned up at the vicarage. Although I had cycled through the village many times I had never particularly noticed the vicarage, which lay well back from the road behind high hedges and trees.
I was amazed! It was bigger than almost any house I knew in the industrial town where I lived and looked bigger than the church itself.
I parked my bike and rang a bell on the front door, which was inside a big porch and waited. After quite a while the door opened and I was greeted by a maid in full black and white uniform. I knew absolutely no one who had servants.
I remember very little of my teaching sessions; the boy got through the exam, though I suspect he would have done no matter how bad he was at arithmetic. But I do remember the opulence of the vicarage; it was like a palace to me.
Some years later I became aware that the whole village was owned by a nobleman..(who later became notorious for his support of the Nazis) He had the patronage of the church and appointed its vicar. The vicar himself had a cushy life for the village was not very big and he had a curate who took most of the services.
Those were the days!! And it is a good job they have gone.

By the way, this would have been in the late 1930s

Tony

[perfnet]

Possibly a rector rather than a vicar. The difference, as you point out, being that a rector was appointed by a landowner into a position attracting a serious income and was therefore a worthy sinecure in bygone years. The term has changed its meaning somewhat more recently.

[Tonysmedley]

Yes, it could well have been a rector.

Quote

". Roughly speaking, the distinction was that the rector directly received both the greater and lesser tithes of his parish, and a vicar received only the lesser tithes (the greater tithes going to the lay holder, or improprietor, of the living); a perpetual curate with a small cure and often aged or infirm received neither greater nor lesser tithes, and received only a small salary (paid sometimes by the diocese)."

Tony

[perfnet]

And probably explained the need for all those poor priests in the Regency romances to find a good parish so they could marry well!