So, with the aid of a mortgage of £300 from Queen Anne’s Bounty, a clerical building fund, plans were promptly put into place to build a new parsonage. We have come to expect to find the large Victorian village vicarage situated close to the church it served but as this was not feasible in Cretingham, the new house was set in pleasant surroundings on the approach to the village on the Otley road. Until the house was ready, the Farleys lived in the nearby village of Brandeston, the vicar commuting to attend his parishioners. In his late forties, Farley had been a clergyman for twenty-three years, having trained at St Bee’s, a theological college noted for its advancement of the Evangelical cause in the Church of England. In entering the Church he was following a family tradition, his father having held the perpetual curacy of Broad Town in Wiltshire. The vicarage at Cretingham, from a painting by Frederick Farley, 1875. (Author’s collection) The young man, having served his apprenticeship acting as curate in two parishes in Lancashire, was given better paid employment at Baldock in Hertfordshire in 1841, which had enabled him to embark on marriage the previous year and later, the responsibilities of fatherhood.
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