A separate set of accounts, in a different book, show:
'The Accounts of Mr Nathaniel King and Mr George Sharkey, churchwardens for the year. It is interesting to see what was spent.
Paid Coleman's man for a polecat |
1 shilling 2 shilling |
|||
| Paid for a proclamation and prayer book Bread and wine for Whitsuntide Mending of bell wheel Bread and wine Another polecat Bread and wine for Michaelmas Paid for 45 dozen of bread cheese a 'barrill' of ale Bread and wine for Christmas Another polecat Bread and wine for Easter Polecat Paid for putting up the bell for work and stuff Paid for brooms, washing the church linen and dressing the church at Christmas and Easter Paid for three funerals |
| |||
Unfortunately the 1714 accounts are missing [folio 81]. The 1715 accounts [folio 82] show that they are still paying for polecats (four in the year) 5s 6d for a new bell rope and £1 5s 0d for a new bell wheel and hanging the bell, but there is no mention of the Almshouse, or building materials.
Polecat, from Quadrupeds, by Bewick
The Polecat, Proto Tebbitus
.
A larger and even fiercer relation of the weasel, which was a menace
in any chicken run. Now extinct except in some remote regions of
Scotland and, reputedly, in the House of Lords (Michael Foot in the House of Commons compared Norman Tebbit, who was a violent debater, to ’an untrained polecat.’)
From a reference to Thomas as the vicar, we know that a church was in existence on Paddington Green in 1324, but there may have been earlier ones. This building was demolished in 1678, after a new one had been erected in 1675. Hogarth married Jane Thornhill in this building in 1729.
In 1788 an Act of Parliament for a new church was passed as the old one was too small. This was demolished in 1788 and the present St. Mary's Church was opened in 1791, at a cost more than £6,200. Progress in collecting this sum was slow, but achieved in the end. Mrs Siddons was buried in the churchyard in 1831.
