and with a buttery and cellar at the other. Also one other
house 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."

[Illustration: WINDOW OF SOUTH WING, UFTON COURT]

Here the house for guests is an important feature of the clergyman's
house; and about the same date, in 1352, we find the Bishop of
Winchester ordering the prior and convent of Merton to provide "a
competent manse for the vicar, viz. a hall with two rooms, one at one
end of the hall, and the other at the other end, with a drain to each,
and a suitable kitchen with fireplace and oven, and a _stable for six
horses_, all covered with tiles, and completed within one year, such
place to remain to the use of the said vicar and his successors." Unless
the vicar was a very sporting parson he would not require a stable for
six horses, and this was doubtless intended for the accommodation of the
steeds of his guests.

The descriptions of these old rectory-houses are interesting. The Rector
of Allington, Kent, possessed a house consisting of "a hall, parlour,
and chamber over the parlour, stairs-head, beside the parson's
bedchamber, parson's lodging-chamber, study, chamber behind the chimney,
chamber next adjoining westward, buttery, priest's chamber, servants'
chamber, kitchen, mill-house, boulting-house, larder, entries, women's
chamber; gatehouse, still beside the gate, barn next the gate; cartlage,
barn next the church, garden-house, court." The barn next the church was
probably the tithe-barn. Tithe was then paid in kind; hence a barn was
required to contain the dues of the parishioners. Sometimes these
tithe-barns are very large and long, especially when the tithe-owner was
the abbot of some monastery. Near Reading there is still standing the
barn of the abbey, and at Cholsey, in Berkshire, there is one of the
finest specimens of the kind in England.

[Illustration: STONE TITHE BARN, BRADFORD-ON-AVON]

There still remain several of these old pre-Reformation parsonages and
rectories. The most noted is the clergy-house at Alfriston, Sussex,
wh