From the above terrier, I am inclined to value the income at about
90_l_. per annum.
The benefice, in 1771, was about 350_l_. per annum: the late Rector,
John Parsons, procured an act, in 1773, to enable the incumbent to grant
building leases; the grant of a single lease, in 1777, brought the
annual addition of about 170_l_. The income is now about 700_l_. and is
expected, at the expiration of the leases, to exceed 2000_l_.
The repairs of the chancel belong to the rector, and the remainder of
the building to the parish.
SAINT PHILLIP's.
We have touched upon various objects in our peregrinations through
Birmingham, which meet with approbation, though viewed through the
medium of smoke; some of these, being covered with the rust of time,
command our veneration; but the prospect before us is wholly modern.
We have mounted, by imperceptable gradations, from beauty to beauty,
'till we are now arrived at the summit.
If an historian had written in the last century, he would have recorded
but two places of worship; I am now recording the fourteenth: but my
successor, if not prevented by our own imprudence, in driving away the
spirit of commerce, may record the four-and-twentieth. The artist, who
carries the manufactures among foreigners, or the overseer, who wantonly
loads the people with burdens, draws the wrath of the place upon his
own head.
This curious piece of architecture, the steeple of which is erected
after the model of St. Paul's, in London, but without its weight, does
honour to the age that raised it, and to the place that contains it.
Perhaps the eye of the critic cannot point out a fault, which the hand
of the artist can mend: perhaps too, the attentive eye cannot survey
this pile of building, without communicating to the mind a small degree
of pleasure. If the materials are not proof against time, it is rather
a misfortune to be lamented, than an error to be complained of, the
country producing no better.
Yet, amidst all the excellencies we boast, I am sorry to charge this
chief ornament with an evil which admits no cure, that of not ranging
with its own coemetery, or the adjacent buildings: out of seven streets,
with which it is connected, it lines with none.--Like Deritend chapel,
of which I have already complained, from a strong attachment to a point
of religion, or of the compass, it appears twisted out of its place. We
may be delighted with a human figure, complete in stature, exactly
moulded with symmetry, and set off with the graces of dress; but we
should be disgusted, if his right side seemed to attempt to out-walk
his left.
This defect, in religious architecture, arises from a strict adherence
to the custom of the ancients, who fixed their altars towards the east.
It is amasing, that even weakness itself, by long practice, becomes
canonical; it gains credit by its age and its company. Hence, Sternhold
and Hopkins, by being long bound up with scripture, acquired a kind of
scripture authority.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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