THE OLD RECTORY

The Old Rectory stands on land which in the mid-12th century was held by John FitzGilbert, King’s Marshal to Henry III who gave half of it to Bradenstoke Priory. There seems to have been a clergy house on or close to this site at that time and the rector held ‘glebe land’ which he was free to cultivate himself or let out to local farmers. The rectory estate consisted of twenty-six acres with feeding rights for forty sheep and one ram.

After the death of John Fitzgilbert, a dispute about patronage of the church was referred to the Bishop of Salisbury for arbitration. By 1245 it had been decided that Bradenstoke priory should have all the tithes of corn, hay and cheese from its demesne land at Easton, that all other tithes arising should be kept by Easton church and that the church should be given to the priory at Easton. From then on, the duty of serving the parish church was undertaken by a brother of the priory until 1369 when the parishioners began to worship in the priory church itself.

At the core of the Old Rectory, there stands a Grade II listed timber-framed dwelling of about 1620. The house, located adjacent to Holy Trinity church, was occupied for over three hundred years by a succession of ecclesiastical gentlemen, some of more interest than others, and became commonly known as the vicarage or parsonage.

John Townsend Lawes took over the role of vicar in the early 1800s. Although he did live in the village from time to time, he left the care of the parish chiefly to subordinate curates, perhaps preferring his other career as master of Marlborough Grammar School.

Lawes was regarded as a strict disciplinarian and in 1818 was required to appear at Wiltshire Assizes regarding an assault upon Courtney Bruce, one of his scholars. It appears that young Bruce had presented his homework in an improper state for which Mr Lawes had hit him on the head with his knuckles.

Bruce suffered a headache and was ‘inflicted with constipation of the bowels’ considered by a surgeon and physician to be caused by the blow, although two other medical men did not agree. However, the jury found the defendant guilty, adding that although there was no intention to injure, the blow was an improper form of punishment. Mr Lawes was fined 6s 8d.

In an era when schoolboys were routinely subjected to far worse beatings, this case is interesting for the sharp contrast between the seriousness with which the assault was viewed and the modest fine imposed. Maybe an indication that the judge considered the case should never have been brought.

When John Lawes died in 1838, he left the sum of one hundred pounds to the industrious Anglican poor of the parish, to be combined with a similar charitable gift of £500 donated by William Francis in 1808.  In 1900 the income of the two charities was £23 and 2 cwt of coal was annually distributed to each of 154 people.

From 1917 to the 1930s beneficiaries of Francis’s charity usually received coal, those of Lawes’s usually clothing. After the second world war when the income of both charities was about £24, most gifts were of money. In 1986 the charities merged, the capital was given away in sums of £25 and the combined charity eventually ceased to exist.

In 1839 Reverend David Llewellyn was appointed perpetual curate and moved to the village with his wife Elizabeth and sons John, Arthur and David – his daughter Elizabeth was born here in 1843.

Whilst completing a questionnaire for the Collections for the Parochial Histories of Wiltshire in August 1862, Reverend Llewellyn twice complained about the vicarage which he called ‘one of the coldest parsonage houses in the Diocese’ and later ‘the house in which I have lived for more than twenty years is so cold and uncomfortable that I wish your antiquarian society would build me a new one.’  After his father’s death in 1868, Arthur, the only surviving son, took over as curate for the next three years.

These were difficult times for country clergymen. Congregations had never been high and they had now begun to decline. There was general dissatisfaction with the way the Church of England was run. Nepotism abounded and training for the ministry was virtually non-existent. While few clergymen were grossly immoral, a goodly proportion were uninspired and uninspiring. The Methodist movement of the 18th century had broken away from the established church and was providing an accessible and attractive alternative for many parishioners.

By the time the last ecclesiastical resident, Reverend Thomas Kemm, arrived with his wife in 1894 the vicarage had been enlarged and modernised.

Reverend Kemm came from a well-to-do family, his parents owned Avebury Manor. He had been ordained priest seventeen years before, then journeyed to Australia where he had served various parishes, returning to Cornwall in 1891 before coming to Easton Royal.

The vicar and his wife both looked and acted the part and were treated with a great deal of respect by the villagers. He was tall, dignified and slow moving, while she dressed and behaved in every way like a grand lady. They were amongst the few people in the village to whom the boys would touch their caps and the girls curtsied.

Every week, Reverend Kemm would take a class in the village school and was not above giving a cuff round the ear if a pupil fluffed an answer to one of his questions in a test of religious knowledge. In his time, the vicar had been a good cricketer and walked to Milton Lilbourne on a Saturday afternoon to watch the local team play, cramping the style of the boys there who were pleased to see him go home so that they could continue with a bit of larking around.

In 1934 the Ecclesiastical Commissioners disposed of the property which passed into secular use and was named the Old Vicarage. The first resident was Baron Van Haeften, a Dutch aristocrat who had come to England in 1904 to marry a British girl.

During the First World War, Frans Izaak Van Haeften had served with distinction as a captain in the Scots Guards. His foreign sounding name initially caused some confusion amongst his men who did not understand the difference between ‘Von’ and ‘Van’ and apparently needed some reassuring that they ‘were not being led by a Hun’.

Soon after the war the Baron’s first marriage ended in divorce, but some years later he met his second wife Anne, purchased the Old Vicarage and the couple lived here very happily until his death in 1966. Both Frans and Anne are buried in the village cemetery.

The house was first listed in June 1988 as the Old Rectory.

Reverend and Mrs Kemm