Barton-le-Clay
Rectory
Places > Barton-le-Clay > Historic Buildings
Rectory Put on Preservation List
Architectural Treasure In Barton Village
Luton News 18th June 1953
This article in the Luton News describes Barton Rectory as an 'Architectural Treasure'.
"In countless English villages the large rambling old house which for so long the rectory is o longer the home of the rector and his family.
Deserted through economic necessity for a smaller house, the rectory may, at worst, be left to the weather and to age.
This is not the fate of Barton rectory. It has been put on the list of buildings to be preserved by the ministry of Housing and local Government .
Today, although it has been decided into two, Barton Rectory still houses the Rector.
The cost of upkeep worried the incumbent as far back as 1607 when a document in the County Record Office states that the house and grounds cost the then rector to date 361.6s.8d -'besides meat and drink for the workmen.'
The house itself is probably 16th century, although the actual date when it was built is not known.
In the document of 1607 the Rectory was described as a mansion house of four bays, with 30 rooms on two storeys. The house also had a brew house, a ,ilk house, a boulting house (where flour was sifted) and a furnace house, as well as sundry pantries and butler's cellars.
It boasted, too a corn loft, and over the loft, in the words of the document, 'a house of office.'
Another document dated1705. suggests that a house was little altered during the century.
The Victorian History of Bedfordshire describes the house as being considerable age in part.
Wide mullioned windows in the hall are said to be late 16th century, while the staircase is thought to be of the same period.
Fragments of stained glass used in the windows were thought to have come form the church.
The remains of the moat on the south and was at of the house are still to be seen, and the view to the Barton hills at the back must have changed very little with the centuries."
Page last updated: 19th May 2014