Clergy house

This practice exists in many denominations because of the tendency of clergy to be transferred from one church to another at relatively frequent intervals.

Clergy houses frequently serve as the administrative office of the local parish, as well as a residence.

Partly because of the general conservation of churches, many clergy houses have survived and are of historic interest or importance.

[3] In some countries where the clergy houses were often rather grand, many of them have now been sold off by the churches and replaced by more modest properties.

In North American Anglicanism, a far greater proportion of parish clergy were (and still are) titled as rector than in Britain, so the term rectory is more common there.