This graphic touch is interesting and suggestive. The place had apparently an ancient character, with a strongly walled fore-court, capable of being closed and defended. Such a plan--which was always that of a manor-house--might be necessary of old for rectories, where the tithe-barn, often stored with grain and hay, stood temptingly, and occasionally was the subject of dispute.[170] Now it is just possible that the rectory may occupy the site of the former offices of the demesne. No manorial lord was ever resident in this remote vale, as far as we know; but a resident bailiff and a forester there must at least have been, with a few underlings. These officers would be placed in a lodge, stoutly barricaded with wooden palisades--later converted into walls. To this nucleus would be added, besides byres and barns and smithy, a "knight's chamber," for the accommodation of the lord, if he visited the spot, or pushed so far in the chase; and nothing is more likely than that a priest's chamber or house (along with the tithe-barn) would find a place within this safe enclosure. In such a case, the decay and final abolition of the demesne would leave the rectory in sole occupation of the ground. Wordsworth gave up his tenancy, after the death of two children, in the belief that the spot was unhealthy. It must have been still more so in ancient times, while the marsh that almost surrounds it was still undrained. [170] In the mediæval story of Reynard the Fox, the Priest's barn is well walled about. See Francis Bond's _Misericords_, p. 73. On the re-construction of the rectory in 1895 the old elevation was preserved as much as possible, but the level of the ground floor was raised five feet. Tradition also states that the Rev. Thomas Jackson served personally the chapel of Langdale, and certainly--if he lived in that valley--this would be more convenient for him than the parish church. The curates under him appear to have been men of ability and worth. William Johnson indeed secured a fame as educationalist that is recorded in the _National Dictionary_. A Cumberland man, born in 1784, he appears to have come to Grasmere as schoolmaster before the death of the old curate Rowlandson. He began to officiate in 1810, shortly after he had entered St. John's College, Cambridge. His stay in Grasmere was short, for Dr. Andrew Bell, when visiting Wordsworth in 1811, was so struck by his management of the village school, that he offered him the post of Master of the school then being built by the National Society in London; and thither he repaired next year. He became organizer to the Society and school inspector and rector of a London church. After his retirement from more active work, he returned (about 1848) to Grasmere, where he bought a piece of land and built the house, since enlarged, called Huntingstile. He was a friend of Edward Quillinan, Wordsworth's son-in-law, and in 1853 edited his poems with a memoir. He lived till 1864.