[Illustration: Pre-reformation Clergy House, Alfriston. (By kind permission of the publishers of the _Builder_.)]
There is a parsonage house at Alfriston, within three miles of Dean, Sussex, of the fourteenth century, so unchanged and well preserved that it has been made over to the National Trust for Preserving Places of Historic Interest. It has the usual hall, constructed of oak framing, the interstices being filled with "wattle and dab," open to the roof with large cambered tie-beams and moulded king-posts. At the upper end of the hall is the soler, of two stories.
[Illustration: Pre-reformation Clergy House, Alfriston. (By kind permission of the publishers of the _Builder_.)]
There are others of stone at Congresbury (Somerset), King's Stanley (Gloucester), Wonstone (Hants.), Notgrove (Gloucester); of timber at Helmsley (Yorkshire); and many others. And, just as many farmhouses which were once small manor houses still retain their ancient mediæval features disguised by modern alterations, so there are many parsonage houses in which the original house of the fourteenth or fifteenth century still remains, and may be traced by a skilful eye amidst the subsequent additions.
We derive our fullest information about the old parsonage houses, however, from literary sources, from the settlements of vicarages which describe the old rectory house, or dictate how the new vicarage house shall be built; from the old terriers which describe the then existing houses, and from the inventories of wills which go from room to room, naming the rooms, and detailing the furniture in them.
Thus a deed of 1356 describes the rectory house of Kelvedon, in Essex, existing at that date--and how long before that date we do not know--which the Abbot and Convent of Westminster, in the settlement of a vicarage there, assigned to the vicar as his residence. The deed describes it as--
One hall situate in the manor of the said abbot and convent near the said church, with a soler and chamber at one end of the hall, and with a buttery and cellar at the other. Also one other house[146] in three parts, namely, a kitchen with a convenient chamber in the end of the said house for guests, and a bakehouse. Also one other house in two parts next the gate at the entrance of the manor for a stable and cow-house. He (the vicar) shall also have a convenient grange, to be built within a year at the expense of the prior and convent. He shall also have the curtilage with the garden adjoining the hall on the north side enclosed as it is with hedges and ditches.[147]
