![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() This room wasn’t used very often so she didn’t always attend to it, but the parson had made a special request for her to get it looking extra nice, and she had taken to the task with her customary diligence. His housekeeper, a Mrs Rosemary Chapman, was going about her business in the guest bedroom on the top floor – wiping surfaces, vacuuming, and humming as she went. Though the parson was not at home, his third of the building was neither empty nor quiet. In spite of its greater size (five bedrooms and two bathrooms, according to the estate agent’s particulars), the part now in private ownership had been given the modest name of Parsonage Cottage. It continued to fulfil its job of sheltering its parson from the elements, while the other two-thirds had been sold off. A few years earlier, for reasons to do with money, the third of the building closest to the church had, with some internal bricking-up, been discreetly separated from the rest. Its fortunes had declined though, and its latest incumbent had been the first to suffer its new incarnation as a semi-detached dwelling. A list of their names could be found engraved on a wooden board inside the church. A handsome brick building of three storeys, it had been built on the site of a previous, smaller church house and had been accommodating parsons for more than two hundred years. Peter’s church, a yew tree and a grave-spattered lawn separating the two. When viewed from the village green, as it tended to be, the parsonage stood to the right-hand side of St. ![]()
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