THE FATE OF THE PARSONAGE
By W. J. FERRAR
COUNTRY40VERS will agree that with the ancient church the parsonage is the centre of the charm of the village. The old iron-work of its gates, the shady drive up to the house, the wide lawns and colourful borders, and the spreading cedars give it dis- tinction as a haunt of ancient peace. It may boast a copper-beech which is one of the oldest and biggest in England, or a quiet avenue where some famous Bishop, once its Rector, in cassock and bands, meditated his sermons, or a rosery where those popular blooms Mrs. John Robinson or Miss Ellen Jones were nursed into individuality. Anyway, with its immemorial elms and murmur of innumerable bees, it is, as we think of the village, one of our most charming memories.
There is little doubt that, as parsonages, such pleasant pictures are doomed. They have come down from quite different days from ours : the days when the younger son of the squire took the living as a matter of course ; the days when the College Fellow waited for it, and after it fell vacant brought down his books and wine in waggons, and built on one or two more bedrooms for pupils—he is now P " rara avis in terris (in a country living)"—the days when a gardener was paid LI a week, and maids were dear at LI° or £12 a year, and coal was 15s. a ton. They belong to the time when it was the ambition of the rising man making money to put a son into the Church, and to give his daughter the status of a Rector's lady. Most of all, though Tithe had its ups and down, who in those days would have thought it possible for that source of income to suffer at a blow the permanent cut of 23 per cent.?
Now it is a fact that the large house, perhaps of twenty roams, with all the surroundings of a small mansion, as we know it in Jane Austen's pages, and the acres of garden encircled by perishable walls, are .an actual deterrent to the young clergyman who feels a call to work in the country and bring up a family in its pure air and free- dom, as well as to the older man worn out with the strain of town- work and used to the comfortable, compact box, with its strip' of garden, he has called his home for years. It will strike them as unreasonable that a small income—say, £40o a year—should be reduced almost to vanishing-point by the expense of dilapidations, of raising the necessary water for daily use, of providing even a semblance of heat for vast rooms, as they seem to him, and long passages. He may not realise that garden walls fall down, and that it costs Lr a foot to rebuild them, nor reckon up what the cost of the labour will be to keep the garden decent, unless he is a strong fellow prepared to devote to it far more time than he ought to spare from his professional duties. Faced with the unnecessary burden the acceptance of the benefice offered will lay on his wife, himself and his none too richly-filled purse, if he is wise he can but say- " I can only take it if you get the house and grounds sold and build me a small house with half an acre of garden in the glebe."
There are exceptions, of course. Some districts may cease to be purely agricultural, and new residents may come with full purses to bolster up the old system. The present policy of the amalgamation of livings will leave the best of the residences concerned intact, though the others will be sold or pulled down. Here and there a wealthy man in Holy Orders will appreciate the charm of an old and spacious house, nd not mind the cost of its upkeep : but wealthy men are not just now pressing forward for Orders in the Church of England. Apart from such special cases it remains true that the days of the typical old parsonage—with its many rooms, its beauti- ful grounds and expensive gardens—are past and over ; indeed, they are today one of the greatest handicaps to the efficiency of the Church. It is only their aesthetic value that need be regretted when, as parsonages, they disappear. Farewell, .then, to the yew avenue, farewell to the vinery and the peaches and apricots on the walled- garden, the noble drive, the rhododendrons and the rosery, and the lawn sloping down to the trout-stream: farewell to the laundry, and the cider-press, the cowhouse and the piggery—farewell to the environment of a manor-house of a century ago. There will no longer be the startling antithesis of apparent luxury and the marching
orders of the Church. It is not necessary to speculate on what is to take their place as the future residence of the parson of the village. A recent writer on agriculture (Professor N. Gangulee) says that the parson is%by no means a spent force in village life : indeed, the downfall of the squire has, he thinks, magnified the importance of the parson. In The Battle of the Land he notes the enlarged oppor- tunities of the village rector for serving his parish, and the lessening of the gulf between Church and people, consequent on the war, in which all have worked side by side. Where this " important factor " is to reside need not be discussed here. Only Heaven defend him from the semi-Gothic abortions of the ecclesiastical architect! He and his wife will know better what they want than Ecclesiastical Commissioners, who have long forgotten, if they ever knew, what environment is the minimum in which to bring up a family on £40o a year. If there must be a standard, let the country-parsons and their wives fix it themselves, and see that it is a flexible one.
But this article is no swan-song of the traditional rectory. It is no lament for the loss of the pleasant places, and.large rooms, in which the lines of the reverend fathers of the past were laid and in which their feet were set. With its • eyes enchanted by the pleasant places, it strives to forget the past and look forward to the future. It asks : " What is to become of the parsonages when they are parsonages no longer? " Or, rather, What would it be best for this forlorn but gracious heritage to become in the new age? Can the disused parsonages be made use of, and how? Some, of course, may become the homes of retired officers or civil servants fond of country life : they will date their, etters from " The old Vicarage," and enjoy the peace of its surroundings ; but these will need con- siderable modernising. Some may be useful for educational pur- poses—perhaps those Adult Schools of which Mr. Dalton was not long ago discoursing.
But is it a dream to see them as possible communal centres of village life? They have been that to some extent in the past. Could they be more so in the future? It would be all to the good for hard- working people to have a centre of social life better than the draughty parish hall or village school. Clubs for men and boys, reading- rooms, some rooms for town-visitors, a communal kitchen—the possibilities of such a centre are endless. But I am rather thinking of the grounds, which might be taken over by the parish, even if the house were let or sold with a bit of the garden. That would be a way of retaining much of the charm of the past. How well such an old garden, with tennis-lawn and bowling-green, and heaps of
sand for the children down by the pond, would compare with the
poor results of the planners of a People's Park in a London suburb. As you passed the gates you would see no desecration of the • loveliness built up through long ages, no rows of Council dwellings, no bare spaces where the trees once stood ; but the rooks would still build in the elms and the wagtails still, parade the lawn. There you have it—a communal centre in many a village, hallowed by old associations. At the time of Reformation and after the naves of many monastic churches were bought for the people's worship. Those who look forward today to a social reformation, that is not to leave out the bettering of the conditions under which the tiller of the soil does his work and lives -out his hour, might well consider whether it would not be wise by a big scheme of concerted action, as these treasures fall one' by one from the Church's hands, to acquire some of them for the people as a lasting possession.
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