£400 A YEAR LIVINGS

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 August 1935, Page 10

£400 A YEAR LIVINGS

THAT NOBODY WANTS. Fifty parsons are wanted as rectors and vicars of English country parishes. Their salary will be about £-100 a year, but no applicants have yet come forwa rd. The reason is that on his £4OO a year a parson has to keep up a rectory or vicarage, often with 20 rooms, which requires at least £ 1,500 or £2.000 a y-yar. The ecclesiastical authorities, puzzled to know what to do, are in some places merging two parishes into one, and allowing a rector, with the double salary, to run two churches. In othe r cases they are selling th.* old vicarages for what they will fetch, using one half of the proceeds to build a new small vicarage of six or seven rooms, and putting the rest in trust to Increase th * yearly stipend. This method Is helping to solve the difllculty in some villages, but it can only proceed slowly. The church authorities have more than 100 old vicarages for sab*, and buyers only come along slowly. Another proposal is that rich young men from univ •rsllios should enter the Church, but these young men are preferring to go into business.