The rectory originally stood south-west of the churchyard but by about 1830 it was described as unfit. In 1832 the site was exchanged with John Hall for another, across the road and just a little way up Mill Hill, upon which a new house for the rector and his family was nearly complete in 1836.
Rev J D Barker and his wife were living there around c1900 and on Shrove Tuesdays, Mrs Barker went to the school with a basket of oranges for the children. She lived to be 100.
By 1905, Rev Lewis Carter Jonas was living in the rectory. It was then that he wrote this letter proposing to Miss Black:
Dear Miss Black
I hope you will not think it great presumption on my part to write to you; but I want to ask you to give me an answer to a question which will mean a great deal to me one way or the other. What I am going to say will perhaps come as a great surprise to you. For some time I have felt whenever I have met you how much I admired you in many ways; but now I know that it is real affection for you which I have and not simply admiration. Can you hold out to me the slightest hope that some day I may win your affections and that you will give me an opportunity of shewing how much I care for you. Do please well think over your answer before you give it to me and try to hold out to me if possible some hope one day of gaining my desire. I have been wanting for some time to write and ask you this all important question; but I had not the courage to do so before. Asking you to forgive my presumption in thus writing to you.
I remain yours very sincerely
Lewis Carter Jones
They did these things differently in those days! Miss Black accepted, they were married in early 1906 and off they went on their honeymoon. On their return the now Mrs. Carter Jonas wrote from the Rectory to her father:
My dear father
You will have had the padre’s card saying we arrived. We got all our luggage here safely. May came to see us for a few minutes at Cambridge Station, which was very nice of her. Mrs Slater’s carriage came to meet us at Six Mile Bottom and two carts. We found our tea cups at the station waiting for us, so they were able to come up on the carts too. As we entered the village a few children cheered and waved their hands and the flag on the church was flying. Mrs Slater came to her gate to speak to us and after tea came up here to see us for a short time.
The Mrs Slater that she mentions was tenant at Weston Colville Hall once the Hall family had gone to live at Six Mile Bottom. Her husband farmed 1000 acres They were non conformists, so Mrs Slater welcomed the happy couple on their return from honeymoon as an important village resident rather than one of Rev Carter Jones’ congregation.
Len Loates remembered that “Rev Carter Jones held Sunday School parties and we walked up the drive in groups and gave cheers as we walked. There were swings set up in the old pine trees and ball games. The best thing was the tea. We all had to take our own mugs with our name on the bottom.”
The rectory was the home of the village rectors until the 1930s when it became a private house.
