Romsey's Public Walk
and Pleasure Ground

6

1855 - Avery Moore comes to town and builds a new vicarage

Lots of new vicarages in the 1800s
In ancient times, it was obligatory that a new church should have land known as glebe land to support its priest and, in fact, a new church could not be consecrated without it. Houses, known as glebe houses were built on this land for the priest to live in. During the monastic period, however, many of the clergy who served parishes were also monks, and as they lived in the monasteries, the glebe houses fell out of use. Immediately following the Dissolution, a shortage of houses for the clergy became apparent but it was not until 1777 that the Gilbert Act (1) was passed which allowed clergy to borrow up to two years of the net income of their benefice in order to build vicarages. The Act was later amended to allow borrowing of up to three times the annual income of the benefice and it resulted in many new vicarages being built over the ensuing hundred years or so.

The Reverend Charles Avery Moore

1855 - A new vicar In 1854, having served the Abbey Church for four years, Canon Walter Carus found a new position in Winchester and was replaced by his friend, the Reverend Charles Avery Moore. From the moment he arrived in Romsey it was clear that building a large and impressive vicarage close to the Abbey Church was uppermost in his mind. The problems he encountered in achieving this ambition proved to be a challenge to the strength of the Public Trust which protected Romsey's Public Walk and Pleasure Ground. These problems were to be echoed in the 1980s when the present vicarage was built alongside that of Avery Moore.

The dedication shown by the vicar to building a new vicarage was quite remarkable. Letters written to his friend Walter Carus show he had spent a huge amount of time studying potential sites and how they could be developed. The inclusion of such fine detail led to letters of inordinate length which, taken with his scratchy handwriting, made them distinctly heavy going. Walter must have been a very good friend.

A site for the new vicarage
Clearly the most prestigious site for the new vicarage would have been on one of the corners made by the junction of Church Street and Church Place (Abbey Approach). Here it would stand at the busy approach to the church and at the same time be close to important local dignitaries and trades people who lived and worked nearby. Avery Moore's first choice, the land now occupied by the Magistrates Court, proved to have too many difficulties and he turned his attention to the corner now occupied by the fish and chip shop at 12 Church Street. This time his plans went as far as commissioning a drawing of the proposed new vicarage; and in this we can see how grandiose a vision he had of his new house.

Benjamin Ferrey, an architect of quite some repute, had been commissioned to design the new vicarage. A Hampshire man, he had studied under Pugin (the elder) and had set up a practice in London that quickly grew to a remarkable size. In 1855 he was 45 years old and had a number of buildings to his credit including All Saints Church in Dorchester and St Stephens in Westminster. He was destined to win the RIBA Gold Medal in 1870.

The architect Benjamin Ferrey

Ferrey estimated the cost of the new vicarage to be £1,250 but in a letter to the Bishop of Winchester, Avery Moore scoffed at the figure saying it was "far too high"; at his last parish he had built a new vicarage for only £1,120.

News of Avery-Moore's feverish activity reached the Romsey Register newspaper (a forerunner to the Romsey Advertiser). Commenting on the prospect of a new vicarage in the town the newspaper noted: "the living is small - only £250 per annum after paying a Curate's stipend. There is no house attached to the church, and as no suitable one can be rented or purchased in the town, the vicar is obliged to reside at a distance of nearly two miles from the church". In the first of a series of coincidences, this justification for a vicarage in 1855 - that the vicar had a long journey to the church - was used successfully in 1986 when the present vicarage was built despite local opposition and planning inquiries.

Benjamin Ferrey’s design for a vicarage to be sited at the corner of Church Street and Church Place

The two sites chosen by Avery Moore on Church Street had been built-up for some hundreds of years and there were immense difficulties in persuading people to move out or to sell their properties to make way for a new vicarage. Despite all Avery Moore’s efforts, these problems proved to be insuperable and he was forced to look for another site.

A second-best location was to the west end of the church alongside the Public Walk on land which was owned by John Young (the same who had sold land to the Corporation in 1826). Here it was not necessary to demolish any buildings and a handsome new vicarage in that position would be seen by churchgoers as they made their way to the north entrance of the church. Young was persuaded to part with a piece of land immediately north of the Public Walk and early in 1855 the conveyance was completed. However, the southern boundary of the site adjoining the Public Walk was ragged and there was a small indentation (or “nook” as Avery Moore described it) biting into the plot. This was to cause the vicar a great deal of trouble.

Benjamin Ferrey was called in to redesign the building for the new site. The new vicarage was to have concrete foundations and was among the first in the area to have water closets. Romsey had no sewerage system until the 1930s so a cesspit 10ft deep had to be dug in the garden. A 40ft deep well would be required and water from it would be pumped up to a large tank in the roof to provide a constant supply. Marble fireplaces were to be fitted; Purbeck and Bath stone were specified to be used in the construction of the house. The wine cellar was given particular attention; it was to have two tiers of stone shelves with brick divisions and bottle racks fitted. It was beginning to sound really good; a very desirable residence suitable for a man of some importance. Ferrey estimated it would cost £1,500 to build.

Raising the cash
Most of the money was to come as a loan from the Church Authorities but donations of a hundred pounds each were expected from Lord Palmerston, Lady Palmerston and Mrs Noel (the wife of a former vicar the Reverend Gerard Noel). As Avery Moore himself observed, the benefice was quite small, producing only £327-7s-4d per annum and the most he could borrow was £1,250.

At this time, the Abbey Church was badly in need of repairs to the gutters and parapets and a plan to rebuild the nave roof, a very costly undertaking, had been under discussion for several years. Once again, Ferrey was called in to estimate the cost of putting the church to rights. This came to £2,300 and churchwardens decided to borrow the money from the Loans Society. In view of this, it would not seem to have been a good time for Avery Moore to be thinking about an expensive new vicarage but in listing potential sources of funding in one of his many letters he simply notes that the parish could not help him"as they have to pay for the repairs of the church".

He decided that he would make up the shortfall in the cash he needed by public subscription.

A problem with the site
The first sign of a problem with the location of the new vicarage came in a letter(2) dated 18th May 1855 from Avery Moore to the Corporation asking if he could lease the Public Walk adjacent to his building plot and turn it into a garden. A few days later, he wrote to the Mayor saying that he had discussed his plans to lease the Public Walk with Lord Palmerston and he had been authorised to say that his Lordship"most fully approves the land being vested in the vicar provided that there is no building upon it". It is a mark of the times that Lord Palmerston, who had been elected Prime Minister only three months earlier and was faced with a serious problem in the Crimea where the war was going badly, had found time to become fully acquainted with Avery Moore's little problem and was prepared to become involved in it. Palmerston was not a particularly religious man. Somewhat caustically, Lord Salisbury once remarked of him that the only vicar he ever spoke to was the vicar of Romsey(3)

Avery Moore asked for a reply from the Corporation as soon as possible "as it will determine the position of my house".

The difficulty was that the house as planned with its outhouses to the north was too big to fit in the centre of his building plot because the “nook” in the boundary overlapped the foundation of the house. There was room to put the house at the back of the plot but then there would have been no space for the elaborate ornamental garden he was planning.

This sketch shows the overlap between the vicarage (double hatched) and the Public Walk (hatched).The Town Hall was then on the site of the present Church Hall.

The mayor, Dr Francis Taylor, wrote to say that the Corporation would not entertain the idea of giving up the Public Walk to the vicarage. However, an alternative proposal that there could be an exchange of land, was something they would approve“provided the Corporation had the legal right to do so”. Encouraged by this, Avery Moore offered £5 for the small area he needed. The Corporation again agreed subject to"agreement from the Treasury". In 1855 the Municipal Acts (which governed procedures of town Corporations) required that they sought approval from external organisations for their actions in certain matters. In the case of the Public Walk, where the land was subject to a Public Trust, the Inclosure Office and the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury (the Treasury for short) were the appropriate authorities.

By July 1855, Avery Moore had sensed there was going to be a problem with the Treasury and that things were not going to turn out as he had planned. He persuaded the Corporation to agree to give him the piece of land and wrote to the Church Commissioners asking them to arrange a conveyance. He said he did not want the title of the land to be investigated as there was nothing wrong with it - he was merely trying to save costs!

However, the Church Commissioners didn’t fall for that. They wrote seeking advice from their Counsel Charles Ker - a man of some standing who was also the Recorder of Andover and Conveyancing Counsel to the Reformed Court of Chancery. Ker's view was uncompromising: because of the Public Trust regulating the land, the Corporation had no power to "alienate” it. That is to say, the Corporation could not exchange, sell or even give it away.

In matters such as this, Charles Ker was the ultimate authority and most men would surely have accepted his judgement and revised their plans.

The vicar, however, was not as most men.

The foundation stone is laid and building begins
Avery Moore was now under some pressure. If the new vicarage was not completed early in the following year, he would have to pay another £60 to extend the lease on the house at Abbotswood where he was living. Determined to have his vicarage in the centre of the plot, he decided to commence building despite the fact that his efforts to resolve the boundary problem with the Corporation, the Church Commissioners and the Treasury had come to nothing. He arranged for a ceremony to take place on 11th September 1855 when the foundation stone of the new vicarage would be laid.

The ceremony was a splendid occasion. It was held on the Public Walk and Pleasure Ground and attended by the vicar and his family, the mayor, aldermen, many local dignitaries, the church choir and over 600 school children from local schools together with their 40 teachers.

Avery Moore’s grand new vicarage completed in 1856 (photo circa 1910)

It began promptly at 1 o'clock with a peal of bells which was followed by an alarmingly lengthy address from the vicar who among many other things, expressed his thanks to everyone who had contributed to the £650 which had been raised by the public subscription committee.

The Romsey Register covered the ceremony in great detail regretting that space did not permit reproduction of the whole of the vicar's address although the excerpt they did print must itself have been quite taxing for the 600 children present. After the address, the foundation stone was laid by Mrs Susan Noel and an hermetically sealed vessel containing an article on the ceremony together with a coin of the Realm was placed in the foundations.

Following the ceremony, the children were taken by two wagons to Whitenap Park where they enjoyed games, tea and buns until 8pm when they were brought back to the Public Walk to sing the national anthem. Then they were dismissed by the vicar, rounding off a day, said the Romsey Register "which they will never forget".

This day was a truly remarkable celebration of the founding of the new vicarage considering the vicar was about to build it in the wrong place!

Picking up his boundary problem again, Avery Moore wrote to the Treasury and to Lord Palmerston to seek their support for the transfer of the piece of land he now desperately needed. The Treasury, after all, had not actually said that such a transfer was impossible and they might still be persuaded to agree, especially since part of the foundation of the vicarage was now laid on the Public Walk. Lord Palmerston readily gave his support but the response from the Treasury was distinctly frosty. Writing on the 20th November 1855, John Greenwood, the assistant solicitor to the Treasury wrote: "In this rule of things, you ask me to have the Treasury and the Commissioners parties to the conveyance. If you forgive me, I think you can hardly have reflected on what you ask… What Officer of their Lordships would advise them to concur in a Grant which creates a breach of trust upon its face?”

The vicar's anxiety increases and all patience is exhausted
By now, building work on the new vicarage was well advanced and Avery Moore began to get very anxious, as there seemed no way for him to get possession of the piece of the Public Walk on which his house was built.

Some measure of his desperation can be found in this extract from a letter he wrote to Lord Palmerston at the time:
"...the blame must rest upon me, not the architect, for placing the south wall upon the ground in question! I held back until I had obtained the formal pledge of the Mayor of the Corporation handed to me in writing with the official seal attached! - the formal approval of the Treasury announced by letter and the formal consent of the Church Commissioners to accept the conveyance...".
In a letter to the mayor, Lord Palmerston pointed out that what the vicar was saying was not true; he had not waited for the formal approval of any of these bodies.

Apparently insensitive to the tenor of the advice he had received from the Treasury, in his anxiety he wrote to them yet again making excuses for his actions and asking them to reconsider their reply.

During January and February 1856, his ceaseless efforts to resolve the problem wore everybody down. The Treasury made a very dismissive response to his request for them to think again and the Inclosure Office wrote making absolutely clear the Corporation’s legal situation regarding the Trust. His solicitor, Tylee, was clearly miffed as he returned all the letters concerning the vicarage to Avery Moore with a letter which began "I didn't like the letter you sent me....". In the Corporation, Town Clerk Harry Porter Curtis was deeply offended. He discovered that what he had thought had been a confidential discussion with the vicar concerning the possible support and involvement of Lord Palmerston had been made public in Avery Moore’s letters. These had apparently turned a helpful suggestion into a presumption.

Town Clerk Harry Porter Curtis

Lord Palmerston himself had every right to be offended and it now seemed that the vicar was all alone with his problem and the goodwill and patience of all the people he had involved was completely exhausted.

The resolution
Avery Moore then decided to resolve the problem in his own way. He built a stone wall to the south of the vicarage just as it stands today. It encompassed the troublesome ‘nook’ and another slice of the Public Walk so that the boundary was now a straight line. And, one has to say, it looks quite well and nobody has ever complained.

Early in 1857, Benjamin Ferrey personally inspected both the house and the bills submitted by the builder, George Wheeler and found them to be satisfactory. £1,787-2s-6d was payable for the house and £153-4s-5d for the fences and gates bringing the total to £1,940-6s-11d. Of this sum, £1,250 had come as a loan from the Queen Anne's Bounty and the remaining £690-6s-11d as cash from the vicar which he had raised by public subscription.

By strange chance, the last letter on this subject is from the Inclosure Office to Avery Moore seeking details of his problem. They wanted to know all about it because it was just the kind of case they could take to Parliament in order to bring about a change in the law. The amendment they proposed would have allowed Avery Moore and the Corporation to agree the sale or exchange of the small piece of land which had caused so much trouble. The Inclosure Office had previously written to his lawyer, Mr Tylee, but much to their astonishment he appeared to have completely forgotten everything about it. Could Avery Moore please help them? The vicar must have winced when he read the letter. But there are times when it is prudent to say nothing and to do nothing. This was certainly one of them.

The Public Trust survives All this fuss had been about a tiny piece of land only a few square yards in area. Despite this and despite the fact that Lord Palmerston and the Corporation had bent over backwards to assist the vicar, the Public Trust governing the Public Walk and Pleasure Ground had proved to be resilient. The challenge to the Trust had been referred to the highest level in the country, to the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury, the Inclosure Office and the Church Commissioners who had all agreed that the Trust could not be ‘alienated’.

As we shall see, the passing of time weakened the resolve of the Trustees (the Corporation and its successors) properly to administer the Trust. It was not until around the year 2000 that a serious effort was made to have the Trust acknowledged.

Avery Moore’s problems were not yet over. Among an array of letters about his dispute with his neighbours at Abbey Mills, trouble over the Church Rate and attempts to get his stipend increased, it is astonishing to find he had the nerve to test the strength of the Public Trust once again as described in the following chapter.

1. This paragraph is based on chapter II of JH Blunt’s ‘Book of Church Law’ published in 1901
2. This letter and many others concerning the building of the vicarage can be found in the Hampshire Record Office ref 10M58/PW118.
3. ‘Lord Palmerston’ by Jasper Ridley. Panther Books 1972.

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