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From the middle ages to the present day the houses of local clergy – parsonages, vicarages and rectories – have been among the most significant buildings in parishes throughout England. Architecturally some of the best and most fully documented domestic buildings, their history is that of the small and medium sized house, from medieval vernacular to the bespoke designs of leading Victorian architects and the more modest homes of today's clergy. The lives lived in the parsonage, factual and fictional (from Austen to Trollope and the televised struggles of 'Rev' in London's East End in the 2010s) reveal not just a building, but a hub of spiritual and secular activity, at the heart of local life and linking it to wider, national history. In this engaging introduction, Kate Tiller brings together the architectural and social histories of the parsonage, drawing on the evidence of buildings, archival and literary accounts, and contemporary and modern images, to depict parsonages, their occupants and how their histories may be traced.

The Social Life of the Early Modern Protestant Clergy provides unexpected new insights on the lives of the early modern English and Swedish clergy through case studies and broader surveys. Rosamund Oates demonstrates how the first generations of clergy wives in England used hospitality to support their husbands in the process of reform. Jacqueline Eales examines the shift from the sixteenth-century debate about the legality of clerical marriage to a positive portrayal of women from English clerical families in the years 1620–1720. William Gibson challenges the view that the eighteenth-century English episcopate were rapacious, arguing that they were often careful custodians of episcopal estates. Jonas Lindström analyses the account books of late eighteenth-century pastor Gustaf Berg to illustrate his economic ties with his parishioners, which ran alongside their religious and social relationships. Drawing on Swedish evidence, Beverly Tjerngren charts the decline of hospitality evident in the home of widowed pastor Adolph Adde in the late eighteenth century. Finally, Jon Stobart examines the aspirations to gentility of the late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Northamptonshire clergy through their domestic material culture.

An engaging account of the life of a nineteenth-century priest.

Pevsner described the pairing of church and parsonage as a feature of the English village unparalleled on the Continent. John Betjeman saw the design of rectories and vicarages as highly influential on our architecture. Forsaken by the Church but coveted by the private buyer, this is the story of these quintessentially English houses, with their combination of fine architecture, charm and character, large gardens and often splendidly rural locations. The Old Rectory examines their history, their evolution through the centuries, their many and varied styles of architecture, and their place in our heritage. It also explores the contribution made to our culture by the clerical families who once occupied these houses, and the famous people and eccentrics who have been associated with them. Finally, it considers their current role, and what the future might hold.

`A masterpiece among architectural biographies'.---Sir Simon Jenkins, Evening Standard --

With over 6,000 entries, this is the most authoritative dictionary of architectural history available.