7
1856 - Avery Moore has a problem with his horse and carriage
The vicar extends his glebe
When it was completed, the grand new house and its elaborately laid out gardens had all the appurtenances of a substantial and prosperous vicarage as befitted the magnificence of the Abbey Church. A visitor standing in the decorated porch would hear the sound of the doorknocker echoing around the spacious rooms. Here was a house that had been built for a man of importance, a house which demanded deference to its owner.
However, large vicarages usually have large grounds or glebes attached to them and Avery Moore set about repairing this omission in his own vicarage. His offer to convert the Public Walk and Pleasure Ground into a garden to be maintained by the Church had already been rejected by the Corporation so he turned his attention to the land behind the vicarage which was owned by Lord Palmerston. In April 1856 he acquired part of it in exchange for a meadow called ‘Matins’ that was owned by the Church. A few months later, he persuaded the Church Authorities to buy the remainder of it from Lord Palmerston. The vicarage now had a most impressive glebe stretching from the vicarage all the way down to the river Test, and from Mill Lane through to Abbey Meads.
Access across the Public Walk
But now there was a new problem. In a corner of the vicar’s newly acquired land there was a coach house which he dearly wanted to use - for what could complement the picture of his vicarage more perfectly than a horse and carriage at the front door? The difficulty was that the shortest route from the coach-house to his front door was across the Public Walk. Bearing in mind that his house was unlawfully built on the Public Walk, it might have seemed prudent at this point not to press the issue of access across the land. But that was not Avery Moore’s way. In March 1857 we find him writing to the mayor complaining how unreasonable it was that to get from his coach-house to the front of the vicarage he was obliged to travel via Market Place, Church Street and Industry Road (Mill Lane). With remarkable audacity he offered the Corporation a yearly rent of one shilling to allow him access across the Public Walk.
Perhaps because of his fondness for the vicar or as likely because of concern for the future of his soul, the mayor, Mr Beddome, replied that if it was his decision alone, he would give the good vicar "carte blanche". However, he had a duty to refer the question to the Council. Things did not go quite as planned at the subsequent Council meeting because the mayor subsequently wrote to say that the question would have to be referred to another committee of which he was chairman but "if my neighbour gets his way, you will have to pay five shillings per year!"
Considering all that had gone before, the Corporation resolved this problem by a remarkable fudge. On the 24th of May 1857, the Town Clerk, Harry Porter Curtis, wrote to say that the Corporation had, "so far as they lawfully could", acceded to Avery Moore's request for access at a rent of one shilling a year on condition that he agreed that the Corporation could withdraw its consent at any time without notice. Or to put it another way; the Corporation could not lawfully grant access to the land but they were prepared to do so unlawfully for a shilling a year provided Avery Moore agreed to relinquish his rights at the drop of a hat if the Corporation got found out!
As chance would have it, the present day trustees, the Borough Council (TVBC), found themselves confronted with the same access problem in 1985 when the new vicarage was planned and access to it would be required across the Public Walk. History then repeated itself to the letter. Maybe TVBC could have taken the same line as the Corporation but in fact they chose an entirely different approach as will emerge later.
In 1860 Avery Moore and his family moved to Sutterton (near Boston) to occupy a huge vicarage that had been built in 1724 by wealthy patrons of the ‘Church of St Mary with Fosdyke’. It was pulled down in 1954 but the present vicar remembers it as “twenty large rooms above cellars”. His new glebe in Lincolnshire was an impressive 495 acres; vast compared with the few wretched acres he had fought to acquire in Romsey. Furthermore, his income had leapt from £455 to £1,032 as a result of his move. Perhaps he found some peace there.
