Wigan Album

What a fantastic building. This is when the clergy were provided with huge houses a housekeeper, gardener etc. Is the Rectory still standng?

Well, not quite, Henry7 - some clergy could afford to provide themselves with a full complement of servants - the Church itself would not employ them. They might have had independent means (younger sons of the gentry, for instance, were quite commonly sent into the Church - to be employed by their family as Incumbent for a Parish they were Patrons of), or have had one of the more lucrative livings - the old Parishes had glebe lands attached from which the Incumbent would be entitled to the rental income. In the bad old days some such Incumbents would hardly visit their Parishes, but would employ another clergyman to run the Parish, usually on a pittance - but even they would follow the custom of their class and have at least a maid in the house. The Great War caused many middle class households to enter the modern world as their gardeners went to fight and their maids went to make munitions.
The inequalities in Clergy pay only ended in the 1960s, when all the income from glebe lands etc was pooled and all Incumbents (Vicars and Rectors) went onto a more or less equal national wage - very egalitarian.
The stables of this Rectory are still there - as The Owls Restaurant. Another house, Bryn Mount on Wigan Lane, was bought as the new, more modest, Rectory in 1943, but that (now the Old Rectory Nursing Home) was sold in 1965 to pay for the even more modest Rectory in use now, back on Rectory Lane.

Thank you Reverand for that information it is all very interesting. I always imagine the clergy of old living in lovely big houses with at least a couple of staff, that's how they were portrayed in many old stories and films, maybe I have been influenced by them too much. WW1 certainly made people think about their status in society especially the middle classes. Like you say, the salary for the clergy was much fairer when it was reviewed in the 1960's. Thanks again for the information.

The 1881 census shows the rector, the rev. William H. Brandreth living here with his wife and son, 3 daughters, a cook, a kitchenmaid, 2 housemaids, a lady's maid, a footman and a gardener plus a coachman and a groom living in the Rectory Yard next door. They seemed to have managed without a butler.