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98. St William College, York |
timber-framed priest’s house was at Flaunden, Hertfordshire, where the house was combined with a large timber-framed tower.
More commonly, however, priests’ houses were separate buildings either within or overlooking the churchyard. The most famous of these early timber-framed priests’ houses is the one at Alfriston, East Sussex (97), built for a small community of parish priests around 1350. (It has the added distinction of being the first building and the second property to come into the care of the National Trust.) After the Reformation, the house became the vicarage of St Andrew’s Church until about 1790, when it was converted into two farm labourers’ cottages. The building became derelict in the 1880s and was acquired by the Trust in 1896 at a cost of £10. It is a standard Wealden house with a central open hall, with service rooms to the west end and a solar above, but it differs in one important respect, in that separate servants’ quarters, comprising a living-room and bedroom, were provided at the east end of the building, with a rear door but with no direct access to the remainder of the house.
Before the Reformation priests often lived in small communities where they might share a common life under discipline. These were often chantry priests, and special buildings were set aside for their
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use, a feature being the large upper floor open to the roof. Perhaps the most famous is St William College, York (98), founded in 1461 in the house of the prior of Hexham. Following the Reformation the college was dissolved, and the building became Crown property. After a succession of private owners, the building is today administered by the college trustees.
Another building of interest is the Chantry House, Henley, Oxfordshire, built in about 1400 as a dwelling for chantry priests. This rare, unspoilt, timber-framed building, formerly known as Chapel House, is situated overlooking the churchyard of St Mary’s and is connected to the church by a porch. Like the house at Alfriston, after the Reformation it was put to several uses: in 1664 it was a school, the grammar school using the upper floor and Lady Periam’s Bluecoat School the lower floor; later it formed part of the adjoining Red Lion Hotel before being restored to the church as a memorial to a rector who died in 1915.
After the Reformation the clergy were allowed to marry, and it is
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from this period that most priests’ houses or vicarages and rectories belong. Those constructed of timber are to be found in all those areas where timber was once plentiful. They differed little from ordinary houses of the period, although they vary considerably in size depending on the stipend, from quite small houses, such as the one overlooking the churchyard at Clare, Suffolk, to such striking houses as Ashleworth vicarage, Gloucestershire (99), and Gawsworth old rectory near Macclesfield, Cheshire (100), built in 1470.