Rectory

Steventon Rectory, once home to Jane Austen

A rectory is the residence, or former residence, of an ecclesiastical rector, but in some cases an academic rector (e.g., a Scottish university rector) or other person with that title. Rectories frequently serve as the administrative office of the local parish.

These homes are typically owned and maintained by a church, as a benefit to its clergy. The practice exists in many denominations because of the tendency of church officials to be transferred from one church to another at relatively frequent intervals. Catholic clergy houses may be lived in by several priests from a parish, as opposed to other denominations.

Nomenclature by denomination [edit]

Depending on denomination, local custom, and the status of the clergyman, the house inhabited by the leader of a local Christian church can be referred to by one of several names. In Roman Catholic churches, it is generally referred to as a presbytery, rectory, or parochial house in Ireland, a chapel house (in Scotland), and a rectory in the United States.

In churches that belong to the Anglican Communion, the building is generally referred to as a rectory or vicarage, or, more traditionally, "mansion" or "mansion of the rectory", depending on the status of the incumbent.^[1] "Parsonage" is frequently used in anglophone Lutheran churches.

Methodists might refer to it as a "manse", the usual term in Scottish Presbyterianism, or "parsonage", which is frequently used in Lutheran churches. Manse is the usual name for the house of a Church of Scotland minister.

Pastorium is the usual term in the Southern United States, especially among Baptists.