Where did the earlier vicars and curates live - if indeed they lived in the Parish at all?

In East Anglian Archaeology Report No 8 (Norfolk) Andrew Rogerson and Nick Adams have written a fascinating report on the excavation of the moated site to the south-west of the church which they concluded was the site of the lost medieval Lose_Hall. ln that report they considered also the possibility of the site being that of the original vicarage and recorded the following information:-

''The Prior of Norwich had land in Hempstead in the late l2th Century. In 1249 the rectory was appropriated to the Priory and a vicarage settled. There was an estate which produced £1 a year and a farm rented to produce £2-13-4pa.''

Rogerson goes on to state ''The Glebe Terrier of 1613 places the vicarage to the south of the church and between the road and the manor close and described it as "a dwelling house and a barne with one little outhouse . . .''

In 1629 the rectory, parsonage house and barn were mentioned in a leasing agreement between Edmund Britiffe, senior and junior, and the Dean and Chapter of Norwich.

ln 1677 the Glebe Terrier states that “in the late times of the unhappy rebellion -- the vicarage house fell down to the ground and was utterly demolished so that we had no house upon the vicarage ground.”

By 1704 the Dean was leasing “the scite of the rectory'' to Edmund Britiffe.

In 1761 and 1781 the Dean was leasing “the scite of the rectory'' and the “ruins of the barn'' to the Earl of Buckinghamshire (who had become Impropriator on inheriting the Britiffe estates in Hunworth, Hempstead and Stody). The lease to the Blickling Estate was renewed in 1837, 1844 and 1865.

So somewhere underground to the west of the village playground there must still be the foundations of the original vicarage, its “barne'' and outhouse.

Presumably it was Robert Watson, vicar between 1599 and 1649 but also Vicar of Bodham and Baconsthorpe, in one of which villages he may have lived, who let the former vicarage fall down so that since the mid-l7th century to 1876 there was nowhere in the village for the vicar or (unless he took lodgings) for the curate to live.

Historically many parishes were held in plurality - a practice increasingly under criticism in the middle of the 19th Century as can be seen in Trollope's Barchester novels. In any event, before that, it was commonly said that “In the 18th Century the Church slept”. Hempstead seems to have been typical with the tower being allowed to fall down in the seventeen-thirties. At the time of its rebuilding in 1744 the Vicar was conspicuous by his absence with the responsible churchwarden being permitted to record his own success in rebuilding it with his own named and dated plaque so prominently displayed.

Oxford Movement and the great wave of reform that so changed the Church of England in the latter part of the 19th Century, Nowhere else did this wave operate more spectacularly than in Hempstead with the arrival of Charles Louis Rudd in 1873 after the death of the Rev. J. C. Leak who had been Curate of Hempstead for 14 years but Rector of Birmingham Parva for no fewer than 45 years.

Within three years, in 1878, the new vicarage, built by public subscription, was erected on the Glebe Land adjoining the Church. The architect was J. B. Pease of Norwich and the builder R. Cornish of North Walsham. The whole of the Church was furnished at the expense of Mr. & Mrs. Rudd with pulpit, reading desk, lectern, font, chandelier, reredos and harmonium as memorials to members of their family.

Not content with their achievements the Vicar, one year after building the vicarage, built the infant_school (later to become the Reading Room). In the parish magazine for October 1877 it was recorded that “a room capable of holding 80 people has just been erected by public subscription. It is built of stone and red brick and has a neat appearance. The want has been long felt in the parish of a building which would answer the two fold purpose of an infant_school and Parish Room. Mr. West of Holt is the builder'' A hundred years later Mrs. Diana Spalton when converting the school (bought from the Diocese) into a house for herself discovered a number of letters from former pupils thanking the Rev. Rudd for educating them there.

The last resident vicar to live at the vicarage was the Rev. A. M. Auden who died in 1944. The Audens came from Derbyshire. The poet W. H. Auden (who went to Gresham's School) was a cousin. For three years afterwards the non-resident curate in charge was Rev. John Norman but from 1947 onwards the parish became joined with Baconsthorpe and Plumstead. The Audens had two daughters, one of whom, Ruth, later married the Rev. Wilson, Rector of Barningham, and lived at Barningham Rectory. Ruth Wilson has left some useful jottings about Church life in the thirties and forties in Hempstead and Baconsthorpe.

Mrs. Claudine Fuller (1916-1998) who lived in Hempstead all her life, recalled the Vicarage in her childhood - particularly the much loved Gleave family. They organised for the village children tableaux and picnics in the woods. All the village took part in the money-raising for the Apse in 1925 and 1926. The Sunday School every year had its outing at Sheringham, being taken in Mr. Hagen's Waggon.

The vicarage then went into limbo. It was let for a number of years. Colonel Philip Shirley was a tenant and was Church Secretary and Treasurer from before 1960 until 1977. At one stage it was occupied by schoolmasters at Gresham's. It was really sold in the late nineteen-seventies and became owned by Mr. John Thomson.
Hempstead, A Norfolk Village - Robin Carver, 2000