Parsonages

摘要

This recent addition to the excellent series of Shire publications is a model of how scholarship and well-written, accessible narrative can be harnessed to offer an authoritative introduction to a familiar yet relatively unexplored subset of building and architectural history - and one that is by its nature truly 'local', or, even better, 'parochial'. That this subject has yet to be given the attention it deserves is the more surprising given the significant profile of the clergy in the history of English cultural life and the frequent references to the social role of the parochial clergy and their houses in our literature. More precisely, there have been only limited attempts to link the social history of the parson with the way in which his house was designed, built and used. The author first clarifies the confusing terminology for the houses of the clergy, and her choice of 'parsonage' as the title of her book. She explains how, as well as describing the building where the priest lives, the term indicates the ecclesiastical living or benefice (rectory, vicarage or perpetual curacy) of which the clergy house is just one part, and demonstrates how such holdings varied greatly in wealth and status from the medieval period almost to the present day: she quotes Alan Savidge's pioneering study of the English parsonage in 1964 when he writes it had been successively 'a hovel, a cottage, a house, a gentleman's residence, a priest's headquarters, the hub of the village [... and now] a problem' (p. 7).