Canon Miller rejects Wateringbury (1877)

Post date: Feb 19, 2012 6:21:5 PM

Sheffield Independent 5th December 1877:

The Dean and Chapter of Rochester have offered the living of Wateringbury, Kent, to the Rev. Canon Miller, but he has declined. It is worth £850 a year, with parsonage house. The canon's present living at Greenwich is valued at £7OO, with a house.

Henry Stevens, vicar 1840-1877, who had died on 22nd October at the Wateringbury vicarage (now The White House) aged 68, was eventually replaced in 1877 after extensively advertising of the vacancy with Spence Phillips, vicar, 1877-1895 .

£850 p.a. was well above the average vicar's income, the median of which in the 1830s was £275 p.a. Incomes had risen sharply in the 18th and early 19th centuries before flattening in the mid and late 19th centuries. £400 p.a. was generally reckoned as the income necessary to sustain a life as a gentleman.

See Dead vicar's possessions for sale(1840) for more information on The White House.