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| 1900's
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According to an account of 1649, the Rector's glebe land scattered throughout the common fields of Ickenham, but amounted to rather less than 15 acres, with two portions of meadow in addition. A moated rectory was built well away from the church, close to the common fields. It was down the lane that is called Glebe Avenue today.
Clovelly Avenue is now on the site. A map of 1664 shows the house with a dovecote and 14 ½ acres of enclosed land around it, mostly in Little Horsecroft and Great Horsecroft. The old house survived as Glebe Farm until being demolished to make way for suburban development in the 1930s.
When the Rev. Thomas Clarke moved to Swakeleys shortly after his marriage in 1750, the parsonage and glebe was let out to farm. The Rev. Thomas Bracken, who came to the parish in 1800, found the old parsonage house unsatisfactory, being "an ancient wooden building, consisting only of four rooms" too small and mean for his habitation, and inconveniently situated ½ mile from the parish church and that part of the parish in which the parishioners resided. He probably wanted to be nearer to Swakeleys and Buntings, where congenial company might be found.
Thomas Truesdale Clarke let him have three closes - Orchard Close, Butcher's Field and Betty Marlow's Field - in Swakeleys Road (then called Back Lane) to erect a parsonage house "for the further improvement and better accommodation of present and future incumbents and the parishioners at large, by promoting the residence of the Rector amongst them". An imposing classical edifice in keeping with his view of his status was erected, but whether he always resided there is uncertain.
The Rev. D.W.W. Carmichael, the last of the incumbents to be presented by the Clarke-Thornhills, perhaps found it too grand and moved to a more modest new rectory built in a corner of the grounds on Swakeleys Road in 1927. Ickenham Girls' High School moved into the old rectory. It was demolished about 1961 and Rectory Way now stands on the site.
URC: A new church in contemporary style was opened in 1936 in Swakeleys Road on a corner of the old rectory field and next door to the new rectory.
In 1814 the old Rectory was described as a "handsome mansion". The building dated from the Regency Period. After the first World War, the Rev. Langton formed the Ickenham Debating Society. The group met in the large dining room of the old rectory.
For a number of years the Rectory Field was the home of all the outdoor sport of the village, the soccer club having their pitch behind the Cricket Pavilion. Three tennis courts were made in the shadow of the Rectory garden wall. A bowling green was prepared in the same part of the field.
Eleanor Grove, Rectory Way, Charlton Close, part of Boniface Road- and the present Rectory were all built on this field. There are photographs of the Old Rectory in Yesterday in Ickenham - Page 18, Ruislip, Ickenham & District (Dennis Edwards) - Page 94 (2), Ickenham & Harefield Past (E.Bowlt) - Page 39.