Home Sweet Home Inspection

Clergy houses, like churches, are supposed to be inspected every five years by a surveyor to check their state. The Quinquennial Inspection of a church is always a somewhat nerve-racking event as someone from a local architect’s practice turns up, walks around tutting and making notes, and then sends in a report listing the appalling number of things you have to deal with, broken down into ‘Urgent’, ‘Within the next five years’ and ‘Desirable’. Sometimes matters acquire a different importance with time: we had our last Quinquennial in 2021 and the architect then didn’t seem at all exercised by the presence of masonry bees which his predecessor had been very worried about. Inspection of houses is a different matter because the inspection is supposed to identify jobs the diocese is responsible for doing, not you, and you can, comparatively, relax when they happen.

The friendly young fellow who came to inspect Swanvale Halt Rectory yesterday noted first the gate by the drive which, I told him, had been broken since long before I arrived. I wasn’t sure fences fell under the diocese’s purview anyway, as I know a nearby colleague got so fed up waiting for anything to be done about his that he roped in a passing troop of Royal Engineers to sort it out. We had a couple of interesting exchanges about the age of the building and its odd concoction out of a Victorian cottage and a 1930s extension, and what a shame it was that chimneys, now a pretty obsolete building element, were being taken down rather than repaired (‘I like a good chimney’). He confirmed that the building is in good order although the roof of a bay window could do with some work, there are a couple of cracks that need watching, and the pillar I thought held up the garage overhanging roof and which was earmarked for attention in the last inspection, doesn’t actually perform any practical function at all. The boiler belongs in a museum of heating technology, but I’ve known that for a long time. 

Thankfully the inspectors never seem to spend much time in the far reaches of the garden. This time round I have escaped yet again being told to pull my follies down.