Living in a vicarage is an enormous privilege. Ours is a seven-bedroomed three storey detached Victorian house with a large garden, outbuildings and a cellar. It’s wonderful to have so much space to live in and to share with parishioners as we offer hospitality.
Vicars tend to have big houses so that they can have meetings and offer hospitality (well, I guess that’s the reasoning). I think there are even some minimum size stipulations for living rooms to ensure that you can fit the entire PCC in. So we have a big house. And a stipend of about £20k. The size of the budget is not at all proportionate to the size of the house and the associated heating bills. In fact, if we hadn’t made careful provision, I’m sure we’d fall into the government’s ‘fuel poverty’ bracket (more than 10% of income spent on heating).
We have a boiler that’s 20 years old, single glazed sash windows and 10 foot ceilings. Beautiful but freezing. The diocese is poor and doesn’t have the budget to ensure modern levels of comfort in every house.
So what techniques do clergy families use to keep warm in their huge and unheatable homes?
- Clothing layers and slippers. As I type this up I am wearing my fleece gilet. Essential clothing for a vicar’s wife. At our last church, the vicar’s wife had a down-filled one which she wore nearly all year round.
- Limited room use. We stick to the kitchen and one family room most of the time.
- Baking. And porridge in the mornings. It really helps if you have the cooker on.
Before we moved here, we also decided to use some savings, our harvest from working as engineers in the Far East before we had children. We decided that we’d spend it on being warm in the vicarage. So we’ve installed two wood-burning stoves in the main reception rooms and underfloor heating in the bathrooms. We reckoned that this way we could be warm in the mornings and evenings without having to pay for the boiler to heat the whole house.
This seems to be working very well so far. We’ve managed to remain very comfortable without the heating until now and are hoping we can last until half term this way. The vicar is getting very skilful with the wood-burning stoves, but I’ll save all that for another post.
mmm well its tricky isnt it. Our house is double glazed but the front of the house really is freezing in winter. We have portable fires / heaters that we use in the daytime, the heating goes on for limited time morning and evening and we purchased an electric blanket last winter with the front of the house so cold it was a necessity to keep us ok overnight.
Off on a clergy spouse conference this pm so will let you know if anyone had any top tips!
Hi Emma and welcome. Hope it’s not too chilly for you in here. I’d forgotten about the electric blanket. Ours is not yet on the bed, but will be very soon. The kids have hot water bottles of course. Enjoy your conference – I’m looking forward to hearing tips from other Vicarage inhabitants.
I have every sympathy with you. I grew up in a very similar vicarage. Lovely during the summer but exceedingly cold during the winter. We had huge night storage heaters which we used to sit on for warmth. It was that or cosying up in front of open fires. We always wore plenty of clothes and it wasn’t surprising to wake up to find ice on the inside of the windows. At those times it was sometimes slightly more difficult to remember just how lucky we were to have such a house to live in. Hope the winter isn’t too trying for you.
Oh the memories this post brings back (and fears for the future)!!! You have my sympathy. We used to use stand alone gas fires in the kitchen and living room. Gas fire in the study was good so at least Dad was warm but the five beds and bathroom in winter had to be experienced to be believed! No one ever used the loo in the night in our house!!
At present we live in a modern double glazed curates house and I am counting my blessings and worrying a bit for the future! I shall have to buy a gillet!
Hi Tim and Siobhan. Looks like the two of you had similar experiences! Our curate’s house was also cosily double glazed, so this winter is going to be a bit of a test. The Vicar’s study is perishing – no gas fire, so I think we’re going to be investing in a halogen heater so that his visitors don’t freeze. He seems to survive ok. Must be the Scottish genes.
A vicar I knew in Darlington wasn’t allowed to double glaze his enormous windows because the buildling was listed, and in the winter it was impossible to get the house above 14 degrees. I think their winter quarter fuel bill was £1000, and that was about 5 years ago.
On one level it was a great resource to the parish – you could fit a sizeable garden party in the back garden, and it doubled as a meeting venue for Sunday school and various committees. However, I’m glad I didn’t have to live their. Our modern ‘vicarage’ may have a garden the size of a postage stamp, but at least it’s cosy when you put the heating on!
On my clergy spouse retreat this weekend we discussed your heating the house issue. A number of ladies were telling me that they were now about to move because of the same issue. Apparantly the church of england now have a policy regarding old vicarages and the cost of heating them and will sell them and buy a newer more economical vicarage. I have never heard of that before but 3 people in my diocese are now doing this!
Hi David – thanks for joining the discussion. Brrrrrr. Our house has lovely windows and I’m not sure what we’ll do if the diocese propose double glazing. At least we have shutters for the downstairs rooms, which helps at night. But the wood burning stoves are the business.
Good to see you back Emma. I’d heard about that policy in some dioceses – in fact the Vicar and I were interviewed by our local paper about it recently. Worcester diocese have been going through the same process. We are in Lichfield and I think they look at vicarages here on an individual basis. The position of the vicarage is important as it is so often a centre for the community, so selling off the existing one can be problematic. It’s also almost impossible to find suitable ministry houses on the housing market, so unless there’s space to build one I think it must be a very difficult decision to make. There’s no space nor any suitable housing stock in our parish, for instance.
Ooooo I am in Crewe! We’re not that far from each other!!!
Not far at all, tho’ probably about the furthest from Crewe that you could get in the Lichfield diocese!
I’m not sure how widespread it is around here, but certainly the idea of downsizing vicarages has been going on for a while in Oxford diocese. Certainly during our last but one vacancy the Diocese sold the vast rambling Rectory that the retiring rector used and bought a brand new house that was being built on the edge of the village for about half the money.
The main downside seems to be that as you mentioned, the house was not purpose built as a vicarage/rectory. Both rectors who have used the house have tried several variations as to which room goes where – our current incumbent likes to see people at the Rectory in a more informal space so has two living rooms rather than a study, however when we have a committee meeting, that is generally around the dining room table.
All the purpose built rectory houses I have seen (mostly 1970’s vintage in the St Alban’s Diocese) tend to try to have a clear separation of ‘work’ and ‘family’ spaces, with the Vicars study, along with a toilet placed close to the front door, and with no need for visitors to go through any of the family areas – having said that none of them provided enough space in the Vicar’s study area for a PCC sized meeting.
A church local to my parents has just sold it’s vicarage for a new building. I’m sure they made a lot of money on the sale (probably close to £1,000,000) but I understand that the bible-study which my mum attended has ceased.
We live in a purpose built vicarage built in the grounds of the old vicarage. It’s well designed for family/work life but is still cold and difficult to heat. We’ve asked for a new boiler because the current 30 year old one is uneconomical (hugely) but have been offered new windows and some loft lagging instead.
I’ve learnt to wear jumpers and slippers and in the evening I wrap a blanket around me while watching telly. We’re lucky as we don’t live in a massive rambling old vicarage but it concerns me that it’s not yet winter proper….
Our vicarage is less than 10 years old but not purpose built. It’s a great house to live in, now we’ve got used to not having a dining room (the study provided on the plan is too small for the vicar’s books, computer and a couple of extra chairs for visitors. It’s great for me though as it’s too small for a dining table, so I get a study/workroom/sewing room of my own). As we are only 3 living here permanently we have plenty of space – 5 bedrooms. Effectivily a study for her too! Heating it is expensive but necessary as our daughter is still sometimes laid low with the ME she has had for years. If we weren’t renting out our ‘real house’ (as she called it all through the curacy) we’d be colder than we are. We’re certainly not living only on the stipend.
We try not to have heating on too often, and we too sit wrapped in an old sleeping bag, blanket or duvet if we’re chillingout in front of the tv at night! The living room has a coal effect fire, and is therefore the draughtiest room in the house….
This has been an interesting chain of responses….
Thanks for your comments, Richard, Peter, Amanda and Chris. I’ve posted again with some further thoughts, but I can see we’ve touched a nerve with this topic.
can vicars really represent poor people renting on estates or renting private whilst living in such big houses ? are they aware of what this government is doing to the poor ? i thought jesus might ask this.
Yes and yes Colin. We love to use the home we’ve been given for hospitality and blessing our neighbours. So we don’t see it as ours so much as the parish’s – we have our Ministry Trainee, who serves the church and community, living with us just now and next year we’ll have two of them! And of course we can see how government policy affects the poor – our parish is one of the most deprived in the country. So ‘the poor’ are our friends and neighbours, not some sort of abstract notion ‘out there’.
How well do you know what is happening amongst poor households – not just from the outside but by living alongside them? Many professionals who work with folk in deprived neighbourhoods then go home to somewhere nice and middle class. Clergy live there. Up and down the country. So I’d say we probably know the poor better than many politicians, both national and local.