Sunday 17 September 2017

Frozen Parsons and Liquid Assets

Sometimes I realise how lucky I am. Being able to live in my family's ancestral Great House (now officially owned by an offshore trust), and charging the 50 or so resident Beaker Folk rent, means I live in warmth within the reasonably-sized Archdruid's Suite. Of course, the Beaker Folk are responsible for cleaning their own rooms, and the corridors and dining hall, on the George Herbert principle of sweeping the floors as for God's laws. So yes, the lot has fallen well for me.

Then I read the complaints about the selling off of the Church of England's old parsonages and I wonder. The basic complaint being that the old-style vicars used to live pretty much in mansions, and these days they want to live in 4-bed detached houses with a study and a double garage, and not have to pay for servants.

An old rectory

There's a few things wrong with Olivia Rudgard's article. Mostly that it's one-sided and uncritical. But to be more specific:

The headline suggests the Church of England has lost £8bn by selling off old parsonages. This based on Anthony Jennings guessing that 8,000 houses have been sold off that would now be worth a million quid each.

Thing is, this would only be true if the C of E dioceses had taken that money as fivers and had a giant bonfire with them. And I don't think that's happened all that often - though I know there's some odd types in Ely diocese. I know property has risen in value, but if they'd actually taken that money and used it for ministry, for mission, for buying smaller vicarages that would also have grown in value - then I don't reckon that's such a disaster.

Then the claim that  "They [clergy] feel some kind of guilt that they're living in a better house than everybody else, which is ridiculous, because everyone knows it's a parish parsonage and not their house."

Well, do you know, I've never heard that as an explanation of why a clergy might want to live in a modern house. I've heard them complain they can't sleep at night because the old vicarage is in the middle of town and right next to a pub that's open late into the night. And of course the vicarage was invented before karaokes, PAs and discos were invented. I'm aware that some old parsonages are freezing cold, and the diocese don't necessarily have the money to put in serious amounts of heating and double glazing for an unnecessary number of rooms. I've known a bachelor priest  living just with his mum in a 12-bedroom, 3-floor vicarage with extensive wine cellar. And I've wondered how the typical clergy family can keep such a leviathan of a building dusted, hoovered and clean. And it's lovely when you've got an acre of garden - but it don't half take some maintenance, when the clergy's busy tending the flock and the clergy's spouse has a full time job and they've got a few kids around the place.

Anthony Jennings goes on to tell us, "In the past everyone knew where the vicar was and now they wouldn't, because he's on a housing estate."

And that's the nub of it, isn't it? This isn't because huge vicarages are an asset to the Church or the community. It's because there are people who really still want to live in Bertie Wooster's England - where every village has a vicar, and every vicar has a huge vicarage. Where parsons are important persons (and, implicitly, all of them are blokes) and the Church is a power in the land.

Well, that's not where we are. The vicars are already full-time busy and probably don't need people doffing their tatty caps to them because they live in a big house. They need decent, warm, easy to maintain housing.

So it's a shame about East Coker vicarage. But it's not a building for an associate priest. The Church doesn't need listed vicarages and massive maintenance bills. And it's not like TS Eliot is buried in the rose garden.

2 comments :

  1. Selling off tied housing leads to all sorts of social problems. The Army (and other services) discovered that when they flogged the Married Quarters estate to a Japanese financier and then leased them back. Now they have thousands of houses to maintain, with additional costs to the freeholder for ground rent, which increase year on year.

    The additional blip is that with the reduction in the Armed Forces and a policy of bringing them home from foreign climes, they don't actually have enough houses in the so-called super Garrisons that they are creating, meaning that the poor service people are having to commute from far flung housing estates, just like the rest of the population - which belies the policy of living close to where you work.

    The latest wheeze seems to be discussing getting rid of tied housing completely and letting all service posted from place to place, go through the additional trauma not just of moving, but also buying and selling every three years or so, the alternative being to settle their family and live as a single person, week on week in Barracks and pay rent for a second home.

    It has also led to the social stigma of senior ranks and officers living cheek by jowl with those that they order about during the working day, social disharmony guaranteed. Officers and Senior ranks, need their own separate accommodation to allow the appropriate distance between ranks to be maintained, such traditions are important, in the same way as Clergy, who are Officer Class in the Armed Forces, need to live among, or close to their flock, but with a suitable distance between them to protect their privacy and family life. Barbed wire and alarms being central to that ethos. Just like the Forces, where living on a MQ patch is described as 'living behind the wire'.

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  2. My Rectory was built for the purpose in 1878. It's great to have big rooms for meetings and social things, but it takes some heating. It was reduced in size in the 60s when they knocked down a wing and removed the servants quarters from the attic. We still have the room Edward Elgar stayed in regularly 😉

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