Parsonages

Book excerpt: Some of the most significant architectural features of British communities, the parsonage has provided the central hub for local towns and villages for hundreds of years – this is the story of their evolution, architecture and changing occupants. From the middle ages to the present day the houses of local clergy – parsonages, vicarages and rectories – have been among the most significant buildings in parishes throughout England. Architecturally some of the best and most fully documented domestic buildings, their history is that of the small and medium sized house, from medieval vernacular to the bespoke designs of leading Victorian architects and the more modest homes of today's clergy. The lives lived in the parsonage, factual and fictional (from Austen to Trollope and the televised struggles of 'Rev' in London's East End in the 2010s) reveal not just a building, but a hub of spiritual and secular activity, at the heart of local life and linking it to wider, national history. In this engaging introduction, Kate Tiller brings together the architectural and social histories of the parsonage, drawing on the evidence of buildings, archival and literary accounts, and contemporary and modern images, to depict parsonages, their occupants and how their histories may be traced.