Ruth Rossiter: Our house wasn't really built to be the vicarage, and my father had to pay one shilling per year "rent" (a "peppercorn rent" it was called). It may have been two cottages - so there was a second, boxed in, staircase running down parallel with the one we used and quite useless except to fill with junk. There were three bedrooms, but no bathroom.
A small flush lavatory but no tap or running water, no electricity. Downstairs two front rooms, both quite small, a kitchen, scullery, larder, large china cupboard, under-stair cupboard, a damp cellar, and a large damp room over it for junk which we later claimed as our "den".
From the back of the house a brick path ran up to another building consisting of a large coal and wood house, and a primitive privy. This consisted of a lavatory wooden box seat built over a very deep and hideous- smelling hole. The garden flanked the top of the meadow - and was divided from it by a series of buildings. There was a new hen house - a really large one sufficient to house 30 or 40 hens. That was followed by a big wire-netted run, but the hens we kept were rarely confined within it, but allowed to wander at will over the green fields.
The Rossiters, Ruth
left , Mary right and
twins Jack and Jock
Wethersfield vicarage
in days
of horses and carts
We always called it the New Room and many a rainy morning has seen us children getting up to all sorts of games there, so that we'd be taking our noise well away from the house, when Dad was getting to grips with sermon preparation, or writing the magazine.
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