Parish house

“ It appears to have been a noble place; the land is some of the finest in the whole country; the trees show that the land is excellent; but all, except the church, is in a state of irrepair and apparent neglect, if not abandonment. The parish is large, the living is a rich one, it is a Rectory; but though the incumbent has the great and small tithes, he, in his return, tells the Parliament that the parsonage-house is “worn out and incapable of repair!” ”

“ Then, over and besides the chancel, which was the freehold of the parson, the body of the church and other buildings, together with the churchyard and its enclosure, and generally, if not always, the common church house, were then under the special and absolute control of the people’s wardens. If the law forced the people of a parish to find fitting and suitable ornaments and vestments, it equally gave them the control of the ecclesiastical furniture, etc., of their church. ”

“ Every effort should be made to identify the old manor-house, or its site (often marked by a grass grown moat) , and this should of course be done with each manor, where, as is usually the case, the parish has contained more than one. Oral tradition, in this as in other particulars, will often be found a useful handmaid. Should the exterior of the reputed manor-house be altogether unpromising, that should not check further investigation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ My wife keeps a public-house, and as my parish is so wide that some of my parishioners have to come from ten to fifteen miles to church, you will readily allow that some refreshment before they return must occasionally be necessary, and when can they have it more properly than when their journey is half performed? ”

“ This applies, the Constitution declares, to the revenues of chantries and altars, and even to the lights provided for them, and this property may never be alienated, except in case of some great necessity, when the leave of the archdeacon, or at any rate of the rector, must be first obtained.
The names of some few other parish collections may here be usefully recorded. Dowelling, or dwelling-house money, was a tax or rate levied for parochial purposes on each household—a church rate, in fact. ”

“ After making a tour of the house, and thinking, for the first time, that the poor-laws really were too hard on people; and that men who ran away from their wives, leaving them chargeable to the parish, ought, in justice to be visited with no punishment at all, but rather rewarded as meritorious individuals who had suffered much; Mr. Bumble came to a room where some of the female paupers were usually employed in washing the parish linen: when the sound of voices in conversation, now proceeded. ”

“ Swyre, Dorset, Parish Acc't Book in Notes and Quer. for Somer. and Dorset, iii (1893) , 293 (Lands allotted by parish for support of a blind man) .
[227] E.g., St. Christopher-le-Stocks' Acc'ts, 38 (Yearly perpetuity of £3 4s. in bread and money to poor. 1602) . St. Michael's in Bedwardine Acc'ts, 99 (House left to parish, 12s. of whose rental to go to poor, and 1s. to the churchwardens. 1590) .
[228] Butcher, Parish of Ashburton, 46 (Land given to buy shirts and smocks for the poor. 1575) . ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hundreds, for it is a large parish. The bluffs which separate the hollows are not unpeopled; they have their cottages and gardens dotted over them without order at the caprice of former peasant owners. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They will go back to their own ways. Yet they are a splendid people to work with,—a delightful people. I have many real friends among them. The parish is slowly improving. We have paid off the mortgage, and are now putting an addition on the church. The men have erected the frame, and when the ladies of the parish finish planting, they will put the plaster on the walls. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On his right rose up the big parish-hall where the entertainments were held, and beyond it, the east end of the great church, dark now and tenantless; and he felt the wet woodwork of the gate grasped in his fingers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In 1801, there is an entry in the minutes to the effect, that the office of clerk is still held by this tenacious gentleman, “although he has left the parish.” No wonder that with such rectors, or governors as we have described, and with such a deputy-governor as this, the vestry minutes were lost; the charity-lands were lost; and the parish funds were misapplied!
[139] Beside a very ancient yew tree, which was carefully protected by a raised mound of earth, there grew in the old church-yard, a double-leaved elder tree which enjoyed a far-famed reputation. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Whatever the origin, it is certain that long before the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries the parish church had practically come to be the property of the parishioners generally in a very definite manner, and, with certain exceptions, to which reference will presently be made, upon the inhabitants of a parochial district as a corporation lay the duty of repairing and rebuilding the fabric, of beautifying the edifice, of maintaining the services, and of seeing generally to its well-being. ”

“ The inhabitants therefore of a district parish have no more right to have their banns asked or their marriage solemnised in the mother Church than they have in any other Church in England, so long as they reside in that district. ”

“ To the authors of the History of English Law their existence is due to the natural outcome of the responsibility placed upon the people. “If the parishioners are compelled to provide precious books, robes, vessels, etc., they will naturally desire to have their say about the custody of these articles; parsons have been known to sell the church plate.”
In the fifteenth century the churchwardens were chosen annually in a parish meeting at which, no doubt, the rector or vicar would have presided; all adult members of the parish having a voice in the election. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Any account of parish life in mediæval England must include much more than might at first sight be supposed. To imagine that the story of the parson and his church could adequately represent the story of the parish, even with all that the one had to do for his people and all that in the other was contained and done, is somewhat like thinking that the biographies of kings and nobles and the chronicle of their battles and achievements would tell properly the story of a people or a 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. ”

“ When every parish has its public baths and washhouses open without fees, every Board school its swimming-bath and teacher of swimming, every railway station and public building its drinking-fountain and basin for washing the hands, every park its bathing and skating ponds—then we shall begin to show the world that we do not, after all, fall behind Imperial Rome in this one item of its splendid magnificence. ”

“ I conceive the Churches should be built, not where vacant ground may be cheapest purchased in the extremities of the suburbs, but among the thicker inhabitants, for the convenience of the better sort, although the site of them should cost more; the better inhabitants contributing most to the future repairs, and the ministers and officers of the church, and charges of the parish. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our parish churches, as we have them to-day, are stripped of much that made them beautiful. The cold walls, often scraped of all their plaster and whitewash; the windows, glazed with white glass, or with modern glass of very uncertain merit, reveal merely the structural skeleton of the building. ”

“ We have the good fortune to live in an unenclosed parish, and may thank the wise obstinacy of two or three sturdy farmers, and the lucky unpopularity of a ranting madcap lord of the manor, for preserving the delicious green patches, the islets of wilderness amidst cultivation, which form, perhaps, the peculiar beauty of English scenery. ”

“ What strikes one so much in these parish accounts of bygone days is the richness of even small, out-of-the-way village churches. Where we would naturally be inclined to look for poverty and meanness, there is evidence to the contrary. ”

“ Our parish, which, like all other parishes, is a little world of its own, has long been divided into two parties, whose contentions, slumbering for a while, have never failed to burst forth with unabated vigour, on any occasion on which they could by possibility be renewed. Watching-rates, lighting-rates, paving-rates, sewer’s-rates, church-rates, poor’s-rates—all sorts of rates, have been in their turns the subjects of a grand struggle ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is the old minster or parish church, then the landowner’s church, with burial-place, erected on his private estate for the convenience of his family, tenants, and labourers. This becomes a new parish church within the district of the old minster. Edgar’s laws are the first to mention these churches. ”

“ 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. ”