Parish (geography)

“ At the end of each parish I have added the common statistics:—the number of acres from the measurement of Mr. Hitchins; the value of the real property; the account of poor rate, and of the population at the four periods of numeration, from the Parliamentary Returns. And through the great kindness and liberality of Doctor Boase, I have been enabled to subjoin to these the geology of each parish, deduced from an actual survey in person of the whole county, by that very intelligent and experienced geologist, chemist, and physiologist. ”

“ To know what the district once was, and what it is now, is to know with peculiar emphasis the meaning of the sacred text, ‘One sinner destroyeth much good.’
The eye of a Triptolemus Yellowlee would have found exceedingly little to gratify it in the parish of Lairg thirty years ago. The parish had its bare hills, its wide, dark moors, its old doddered woods of birch and hazel, its extensive lake, its headlong river, and its roaring cataract. Nature had imparted to it much of a wild and savage beauty; but art had done nothing for it. ”

“ This rustic Parish, once their humble slave Now their authoritative arbiter, And chuckling critic. Fools to Parish make Proffer of plenteous power, ample rule Unquestion'd, overflowing revenue Wherewith to embellish village state and make The rustic home a rural paradise. ”

“ The Old Ecclesiastical Parish.—In the absence of evidence to the contrary, the ecclesiastical parish is presumed to be composed of a single township or vill, and to be conterminous with the manor within the ambit of which it is comprised. Before the process of subinfeudation became prevalent, the most ancient manors were the districts which we call by that name when speaking of the tenants, or “townships” when we regard the inhabitants, or “parishes” as to matters ecclesiastical. The parish as an institution is in reality later in date than the township. ”

“ First, it must be understood that all England is divided into parishes—a division recognized by the civil as well as the ecclesiastical law of the land. A parish is that circuit of ground, whether in the city or country, which is committed to the spiritual care of one clergyman. Now the boundaries of these parishes are very rarely defined by any law, except that of custom; and hence in most places it was and is customary once a year to make a solemn procession around the bounds of the parish. ”

“ The centre of the parish, in which dwell five-sixths of the whole population, is a manufacturing town, but the parish boundaries stretch far away, and enclose distant moorland hamlets, and large tracts, it may be, of almost uninhabited country. ”

“ A fine parish indeed, that would have suited me nicely; good level land as far as you can see, no rock cropping up and no bush, everywhere square-cornered fields with handsome straight fences and heavy soil. Only two hours' drive to the railway ... Perhaps it is wicked of me to say so; but all my married life I have felt sorry that your father's taste was for moving, and pushing on and on into the woods, and not for living on a farm in one of the old parishes. ”

“ Take the case of my friend Burney’s parish. An oblong surface through which a high road runs straight as a ruler—wide ditches dividing the fields, with never a hedge and never a tree—nine square miles of land with a population of 900 human beings, here and there collected into an ugly hamlet, each with a central alehouse, and a few feeble poplars looking as if they were ashamed of themselves. There is not a farmer in the parish who occupies 300 acres of land. ”

“ Remember your Parish, Neighbour.
Die.
You speak truly,
I do remember it, a lewd vile Parish,
And pray it may be mended: To the poor of it,
(Which is to all the Parish) I give nothing,
For nothing, unto nothing, is most natural,
Yet leave as much space, as will build an Hospital,
Their Children may pray for me.
Bar.
What do you give to it?
Die.
Set down two thousand Duckets.
Bar.
'Tis a good gift,
And will be long remembred. ”

“ Parishes.Accordingly, the parochial system came into existence about this time, not by any formal enactment, but in the natural course of things. For, when the lord of a township built a church, and had a priest ordained to minister to his people, his township in most cases became an ecclesiastical district or parish. ”

“ The parish in which I live makes me pay my share for the paving and lighting of a great many streets that I never pass through; and I might plead that I am robbed to smooth the way and lighten the darkness of other people. ”

“ Notwithstanding all these impediments the progress of the borough was rapid; houses and churches sprung up thick and fast; so that at the time of the survey, in the reign of the “Confessor,” we find record of twenty-five parish churches, and one thousand three hundred burgesses ”

“ Any British, Roman, Danish, or Anglo-Saxon remains that there may be in the parish, had, perhaps, better be described before the manorial history is given. Every earthwork, mound, or ancient roadway should be carefully noted. ”

“ You, Parish, will take up your quarters in the basement kitchen; you, Carry, in the room to the back immediately over it; while one of the small rooms up-stairs will serve me for a study. Once every evening, Parish, after dark, you will be allowed to go out for the purpose of buying the needful supply of provisions; at which times I will let you out and in myself, and will teach you how to knock so that I may recognise you. Oh! if we can only succeed in remaining concealed for a short time, all will go well. Time is all I want. ”

“ And in examining any English parish, township, or large district such as Hallamshire, we shall see that little else of a tangible or visible kind has come down to us from primitive times. When history is silent and almost every other record is gone we cannot do more than argue from such scanty remains and from analog. We can reason from survivals in folklore, in village communities, and in architecture, and though we may learn little we shall assuredly learn something worth knowing about the far-off past. The history of a parish may be as interesting as the history of a nation. ”

“ In the parish register we shall find the whole history of them; when they were born, when they were married, how many children they had, when they died—a skeleton of their lives which we can clothe with our fancies and make living again. Simple lives, we make them, in that pleasant countryside; "Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath" ”

“ If there is a castle, or its relics, within the parish, the probability is considerable that it has already been well described by a county historian, or in one or other of the numerous journals of our Archæological societies. But it is equally probable that its history has not been thoroughly written, and special search should be made with that object at the P. R. O., beginning with the indexes to the printed calendars already enumerated. ”

“ And if our city is too large to inspire us, our parish is too small. And so to most of us, I fear, parochialism is a bore. Theoretically, we know that the parish we live in is greater than many a provincial town. ”

“ There are the parish vestry, the parish infirmary, the parish surgeon, the parish officers, the parish beadle. Excellent institutions, and gentle, kind-hearted men. The woman dies—she is buried by the parish. The children have no protector—they are taken care of by the parish. The man first neglects, and afterwards cannot obtain, work—he is relieved by the parish ”

“ In the first place, it teaches us that parochial divisions are artificial and comparatively modern. The formula that the parish is the township in its ecclesiastical capacity is (if unconsciously adopted) not historically true. Antiquaries familiar with the Norman period, or with the study of local history, must be acquainted with the ruins or the record of churches or chapels (the same building, I may observe in passing, is sometimes called both ecclesia and capella [20] ) , which formerly gave townships now merged in parishes a separate or quasi-separate ecclesiastical existence. ”

“ The provision of parish books and of a vestry room or parochial office, parish chest, and the holding or management of parish property not being property relating to affairs of the Church or held for an Ecclesiastical charity, are also in rural parishes transferred to the Parish Council. ”

“ It is almost exceptional to find any parish of five hundred inhabitants which does not possess a parish chest. The parish chest of the parish in which I am writing is now in the vestry of the church here. It has been used for generations as a coal box. It is exceptional to find anything so useful as wholesome fuel inside these parish chests ”

“ The first thing to be done was to make a survey of the field. I began to think of all the twenty-five hundred people in this Larger Parish as belonging to me. I felt a measure of responsibility for them all. We, as a church and pastor, must do something for them all, and in order to do it, we must know them all. So I started out to visit all the families in this wide territory. ”

“ If we do the work that needs to be done in the coming days we shall need a true and unwavering purpose, a clear eye to discern the situation, a calm and correct judgment to fit the method to the work, and above all, the constant leading of the Holy Spirit. The Larger Parish is not a method, or organization, or machine, that one can secure and put in operation and then the work is done. It is a vision—an ideal—that must be a living reality in the soul, and then must be wrought out in actual life in the best way possible. ”

“ Every scrap of paper of past generations, showing the inner working of parochial life, possesses some interest of its own; and future generations will thank us for their preservation. Moreover, a careful arrangement of parish papers often meets with more immediate reward. We have ourselves found missing portions of 16th century registers, highly interesting deeds as early as the 14th century, royal proclamations and special forms of prayer, temp. Elizabeth and James I., in parochial litter put aside as valueless. ”

“ See also Merewether and Stephen’s “History of the Boroughs and Municipal Corporations of the United Kingdom.”
Under the head of Worthies it may be worth while to consider whether the parish has ever had amongst its residents, or on its baptismal registers, the names of men of marked celebrity in any walk of life. Nuttall’s edition of Fuller’s “Worthies of England,” published in 1840, in three vols. 8vo., Wood’s “Athenæ,” and any good Biographical Dictionaries (e.g. Chalmers’) , should be consulted. ”

“ The parish church is full of interest connected with the parish, it has been built and decorated by the ancestors of the humble [99] inhabitants of the place, the yard about it contains their dust; in it they have left something of their very best—to be swept away by the modern restorer to put in his own stuff, manufactured at a distance, the whole executed by a strange contractor employing strange workmen. ”

“ Larger Parish is to help the people and to serve them in a religious and social way, not to promote a denomination, to build up a church, to perfect an organization, or to construct or to operate machinery of any kind. But in order to help the people and serve their best interests efficiently, some machinery, some organization, is necessary. ”

“ The parson of a parish, or a gentleman of small fortune who lives upon his estate, may sometimes, perhaps find some advantage in receiving, the one his tythe, and the other his rent, in kind. The quantity to be collected, and the district within which it is to be collected, are so small, that they both can oversee, with their own eyes, the collection and disposal of every part of what is due to them. ”

“ The open field parish retained some of the social vitality of a self-governing community; men who had to concert together for the regulation of the fields, for the purchase of a parish bull, were more likely than the farmers of an enclosed parish to settle in concert questions of Poor Law relief in accordance with the interest of the parish as a whole. ”

“ Rural existence is such a change after the nervous life of a great city.”
“You had a large parish at Belchester, had you not?” Lady Naselton asked.
“A very large one,” he answered. “I am fond of work. I have always been used to large parishes.” ”

“ Parish is the great proprietor at the former of these towns, and is said to be a man of considerable wealth, which he appears to be employing alike usefully and profitably—viz., in reclaiming from the lake a piece of land, about four hundred square yards, adjoining the railway terminus, by which means vessels will be able to unload readily on his new wharf; the reclaimed ground will thereby acquire an enormous value for storehouses. ”

“ Nor should attention be [47] only directed to manor-houses. All old domestic work is worth chronicling, so rapidly is it disappearing both in town and country; and the annalist of a parish should not be above transcribing all the initials and dates so frequently seen on lintel stones. As a rule, every house or cottage, not obviously modern, that has stone buttresses, a moulded wall-plate or string-course, or bevelled stone mullions to the windows, is worthy of careful examination. ”

“ The land, with all that appertains to it, is in every parish made the property of the Corporation or parish, with as ample power to let, repair, or alter all or any part thereof, as a lord of the manor enjoys over his lands, houses, etc. ”

“ Every person who shall receive relief from the parish and be sent to the said alms-house, shall, upon the shoulder of the right sleeve of his uppermost garment in an open and visible manner, wear a badge with the name of the parish to which he or she belongs, cut in red, blue or green cloth, as the vestry or church wardens shall direct. ”

“ Against May-day every parish, town, or village assemble themselves, both men, women, and children; and either all together, or dividing themselves into companies, they goe, some to the woods and groves, some to the hills and mountains, some to one place, some to another, where they spend all the night in pleasant pastimes, and in the morning they return bringing with them birche boughs and branches of trees to deck their assemblies withal. ”