The Rectory:
a case study in the rise, fall and restoration of a Georgian parsonage
Lambeth
Palace records show that the original Rectory was built in the 1720s,
almost certainly to designs by Hawksmoor and his assistant,
though it is not obviously a 'Hawksmoor building'. It was a simple
rectangular building on four
floors, with one large room per floor plus a staircase and small room
off. The door probably faced the church drive, with the staircase to
its right. There are some indications [see above]
that Hawksmoor envisaged similar
rectangular buildings on each corner of the site (perhaps part of his
vision of a 'primitive Christian settlement'), but if so none of the
others were ever built.
It proved inadequate, for within thirty
years an additional block on the north-west corner was added to provide
additional rooms (each with fireplace) on all four floors: the
brickwork and string couses still mark the addition. The north-east
corner was added between 1795 and 1810 (possibly replacing some earlier
work); again, the brickwork and string courses on this side of the
house show the division clearly. The staircase to all four floors moved
to its present position - it may previously have been shifted to the
rear of the house - and the main doorway was moved to the west side,
with a porch. The windows on the south elevation may also have been
enlarged at this time, perhaps because of encroaching developments on the west,
along Cannon Street Road. Thus the building assumed its present basic
form - a simple four-storey rectangular building, with the door and
staircase towards the rear - though the internal divisions have been
altered many times. However, some original features - including
shutters, floorboards and fireplaces - remain.
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The Victorian
additions were less happy. An eastern bay, on three storeys only, was
added - for unknown reasons - in the 1850s, and another on the west
(with adjustments to the entrance porch) in around 1895. The brickwork,
pointing and windows were ill-matched, and the western extension
presented an ugly blank face, again perhaps because of the houses and
workshops along Cannon Street Road.
Bomb damage in the Second
World War, and makeshift repairs, further disfigured the building,
particularly on the south-east corner. When the church was remodelled
in the 1960s, the Rector took up residence in the south-west corner, in
a 'maisonette' on two floors - though unofficially, the Rectory
remaining the designated parsonage house. It was occupied, as a series
of flats or rooms, by a large number of tenants over the years, and
parts of it fell into a poor state of repair. With a single entrance
and staircase, there was little privacy of access. The basement was
separated off, ceasing to be part of the legal parsonage, and was
tenanted by the diocese. The one 'constant' was the top-floor presence
for over thirty years of Edith Wyeth, our long-standing churchwarden,
along with her husband and co-warden Jimmy, until his untimely death,
and their family.
In 1990 the Rector, Gillean Craig, produced a
carefully-argued discussion paper pleading for the proper restoration
of the Rectory - not least because the unofficial 'maisonette'
accommodation in church would have been lost under development plans
then under consideration, and a full report on the various possible
options was produced in 1992. The preferred course of action was to
remove the Victorian additions and recreate a family home - and this
was ultimately made possible with grant aid from English Heritage, to
restore something of the Georgian integrity. The other issue was
whether to retain a separate top-floor flat (with no private access) or
to remodel the basement (where independent access was possible), and
the latter course prevailed. So, after temporary relocation during the
building works, Edith Wyeth remains resident in the building to keep
the Rector in order - but three floors lower down.
Fact and fiction
In Evelyn Waugh's 1938 novel Scoop,
the socialite Mrs Algernon Stitch persuades Lord Copper, owner of The Daily Beast, to appoint her novelist friend John Courtenay Boot as war
correspondent to Ishmaelia.
Unfortunately it is his cousin William
Boot, an inept nature correspondent, who gets sent by mistake. Mrs
Stitch owned a black Austin Seven which she habitually drove on the
pavement rather than the road, to avoid the traffic. On one occasion
she drove it down the stairs of the gents' public lavatory in Sloane
Street. We learn less
about her husband, a cabinet minister (whose character, it is said, was
based on the diplomat and politician Duff Cooper). The point of
mentioning the Stitches is that Waugh says they lived in a superb creation by Nicholas Hawksmoor - as do the Rectors of St George-in-the-East! then...
...and now
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