St Peter’s Vicarage, 56 Mount Park Road, Ealing

The Vicarage was built in 1910 by Morely Horder in an Arts and Craft Style with projecting gables, mullioned windows and coved eaves. The stock brick with stone dressing building complements and enhances the immediate setting of the main landmark along the road, St Peter’s Church.

The problems which the architect of a parsonage has to face are naturally somewhat complicated when the site is restricted in size. This is the case at St. Peter's, Ealing: but Mr. Morley has dealt with the situation very successfully. St. Peter's is one of the most interesting modern churches in near London. and was designed by the late John Sedding. It has the supreme merit of being obviously modern and free of any features imitatively mediæval, while yet the whole fabric is imbued with that devotional spirit which is the chief glory of Gothic architecture. While St. Peter's cannot claim to possess the extraordinary interest which belongs to Sedding's best-known work, Holy Trinity, Sloane Square. it is yet worthy the attention of everyone concerned with the modern development of ecclesiastical architecture. The church being what it is,  Mr. Morley had the responsibility not only of producing a vicarage adequately planned for its purpose, but of devising an elevation which should be in sympathetic accord with Sedding's work. The first design he prepared was conceived in a more consciously Gothic spirit than the building shown in the accompanying pictures; but the voice of economy was insistent, and when it came to the hard facts of the estimates, many attractive features had to cut out ruthlessly. As those of the clergy who have had to do with new houses will be aware, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners are very urgent that no more than eighteen hundred pounds shall be spent on a parsonage. This policy is undoubtedly a wise one. Where an incumbent requiring a house is in the happy position of owning both a large family and a reasonably large income in addition to that derived from the benefice, he may naturally desire a home commensurate with these two factors. The Commissioners, however. bear in mind that his successors may not be so happily equipped, and to an incumbent with a small income. a large parsonage, with its consequent liability to heavy dilapidations, may be a serious and even a ruinous handicap. The fixing of the usual limit of cost at eighteen hundred pounds is, therefore, very reasonable; but it is not made an absolutely cast-iron rule. This sum ordinarily allows for two sitting-rooms, about sixteen feet by fourteen feet. and a study about fourteen feet by twelve feet. In the case of St. Peter's there is no parish room belonging to the church, and in consequence the Vicar would be considerably hampered in the holding of meetings if the reception-rooms of the Vicarage were restricted in size. The Commissioners took this into account, and allowed the expenditure to be increased to two thousand pounds. The extra money has been employed in providing a drawing-room and hall markedly larger than is usual. and connected by wide folding doors. which have the effect of making them one large room for special occasions. The former apartment is twenty-three feet by fifteen feet. exclusive of the bay window. and the latter sixteen feet by fourteen feet, and ample space is thus provided for meetings, which can be attended by a considerable number of people. There are also the dining-room, eighteen feet by fourteen feet, and the Vicar's study, fifteen feet by fourteen feet. As the hall is in no sense a passage the floor accommodation in the sitting-rooms amounts to an area of a thousand and thirty superficial feet, as compared with six hundred and sixteen feet contemplated by the Rules and Instructions of the Commissioners, which goes to show that Mr. Morley Horder has made very practical use of the latitude allowed him. Nor have the other rooms suffered in size from the generous allocation of space to the sitting-rooms. The kitchen does not follow the old suggestion that it should as large as the dining-room; but it is just adequate, and the provision of bedrooms is generous. The typical one thousand eight hundred pounds' house of the Commissioners' Rules has to include not less than five bedrooms, while at St. Peter's Vicarage the number, inclusive of the dressing-room, two nurseries and four rooms on the second floor, is ten. Putting Mr. Horder's plans to the test of figures, it means that, with an expenditure of two hundred pounds only, i.e., about ten per  cent more than the usual amount, he has provided over sixty per cent more living-room accommodation, and nearly double the number of bedrooms that the Commissioners lay down as the minimum - no inconsiderable feat. As was pointed out in the article on Castle Bromwich Rectory last week, the Commissioners' requirements in the direction of substantial building. which will guard against future dilapidations, are wisely conceived; but, despite their fulfilment, the cost of the building per cubic foot worked out at a shade under eightpence - a very low figure for work of this type. A very good and practical feature in the house is the provision of a lift adjoining the pantry, which must vastly simplify the nurse's labours. Such thoughtful items of equipment as this are important in every house of moderate size, but particularly so in parsonages, where the staff of must necessarily kept within narrow limits.

So far attention has directed to the practical and economical virtues of the plan of the Vicarage but the exterior is not less successful, though markedly plain. The Commissioners' Rules lay down the valuable general principle that the best possible use should that London any specifically local material for walls at all comparable with the stone of the Cotswolds or the hard red brick of Staffordshire, with its tendency to over-burn to a dark blue. However, the prevailing material. and a beautiful one if rightly used, is the yellow stock brick that comes from Kent; and as this used in conjunction with stone dressings for church, Mr. Horder employed it also for the Vicarage. Of conscious decoration the front provides little,  but a touch of interest is added by treating the gabled stone porch with panels of brick arranged chequer-wise and by the carving of the Keys and a little scene of the Ingathering of the Net, which mark the dedication of the church to St. Peter. Attractive. too, are the deep cornice beneath the eaves and the simple hipped of the dormers. It is possible that if the house had been set with a smaller frontage to the road and running further back, a more attractive grouping might have been achieved; but such a disposition would have cost more for the same accommodation, and it would, moreover, have made impossible the pleasant and private little garden at the back.

Perhaps the reader who is not particularly concerned with Domestic Architecture in its intimate relationship With the Church may be a little wearied at the continual reference to the Commissioners' Rules but they make too tempting a text for homilies on the general problems of house-building to be disregarded. It is, therefore, worth noting that they specify that the sitting-rooms shall not be less than nine feet high and the bedrooms not less than eight feet six inches high. This requirement seems very unreasonable when translated into a hard-and fast rule. The height of a room should be governed by the number, and area of its windows and by their aspect, and it verges on the fatuous to lay down a law which shall be of universal application to both town and country houses. With rooms of the area usual in a parsonage, it is not apparent why the minimum height should not fixed at eight feet, leaving each set of plans to be considered on its merits with respect to the window treatment. It may very well be that nine feet is a suitable height for the drawing-room and hall at St. Peters Vicarage, which will be used on occasion for fairly large assemblages of people but to demand the same height for the rectory in a country parish where there is a parish room and where, in consequence, iIt is unlikely that there will ever be more than a dozen people in the rectory drawing-room, seems to be foolishly inelastic. Though undue height in rooms involves needless for every cubic foot of space costs money, markedly low ceilings are unpopular with many folk, and not without good reasons.

Reference    Royal Academy 1910, No 1560
Reference    Country Life 29 April 1911 – The Lesser Country Houses of Today page 7-11