The Vicarage

The Vicarage is a house that features elements from the 18th century and possibly earlier, dating back to the 17th century or before. It has a timber frame with rough rendered brick facing and red plain tiled roofs, which are hipped to the right and gabled to the left in crosswings. The building is two storeys high with attics and has a flat-headed dormer. The main range includes small paned vertically sliding sash windows, and there is a central band and a parapet. The first floor has a window arrangement of 2:2:1, while the ground floor has 1:0:1 small paned vertically sliding sashes, with Venetian windows in the ground floor crosswings and the first floor right crosswing. A long central hipped grey slate trellised porch leads to a four-panelled door with sidelights. There are various rear wings featuring three uniform hipped gables.

The Rev. John Kelly MA lived here in 1796. Born in 1750 at Bradden in the Isle of Man, he began translating the Bible into the Manx language at the age of 16 and wrote a dictionary of the Manx language in 1776. After serving as a tutor to Lord Huntley and accompanying him to Cambridge and on the Grand Tour of the Continent, he married and became the Vicar of Ardleigh in 1795. Concerned about potential conflicts during the Napoleonic Wars, he compiled a list of all his parishioners, visiting every house and cottage to document their information in the parish register. This documentation later formed the basis of a book by F.H. Erith titled "Ardleigh in 1796," published in 1978.