For somewhere between £120 and £1250 you can buy the famous early 19th-century Staffordshire pottery figure group, “The Tithe Pig”. Under a tree stands Farmer Hob holding a piglet; his wife stands next to him holding a baby. There’s a basket of eggs by his feet, and a sheaf of wheat by hers. The third person is the parson in gown and bands. He gets one tenth—a tithe—of everything the farm produces. That’s what he lives on, in the tradition of the priests and Levites in the Old Testament, who had no land of their own and so had shares in everyone else’s.
The tithing system was problematic. If the parson is selling his tithe of corn on the same market as you are, he can bring down the price, which hurts everyone. If your sow has only six pigs in the litter, how do you calculate what’s due to the parson? But Hob and his wife are smiling. This year the solution to their problems has arrived: their tenth child has been born. So this extra mouth to feed has been brought to the vicar, along with the rest of the tithe: “No Child, no Pig.”
Skip forward with me through the centuries. The hated tithe goes. The glebe—parish land, the rent of which supported the priest—goes. In 1978, by virtue of the Endowments and Glebe Measure 1976, it was vested in the Board of Finance of the diocese to which the benefice belonged. Parish clergy would be supported from here onwards by their dioceses. At least, that is how most of the parish priests I know understand the matter; that’s why, when I was a member of Diocesan Synod, I heard growls of “Give us back our glebe!” whenever the subject of Parish Share came up.
Parish Share is the money now given every year by the parish to the diocese. It is not a demand, a tax, a fee, or, God forbid, a tithe. It’s more like a gift, legally speaking, though I think that the gently menacing phone calls and emails that the parish treasurer receives if the parish share isn’t paid in full (or on time) are not exactly within the spirit of the law. How do I know this? Two of my parishes could not pay their parish share in full last year. The parish that could did so because it’s been able to hang on to the former curate’s house which, since it’s a large house in a pretty village near Cambridge, brings in a good rent. However, since the other two aren’t able to pay in full, there’s a chance (so the diocese tells us) that there may not be another vicar here after I go. There’s nothing that village two can do about this except assist villages one and three with the payment. But their own head is only just above water.
Are parishes one and three grasshoppers singing improvidently through the summer when they could and should be piling up food in their storehouses for the Diocesan Board of Finance? Parish three has a large 13th-century church in a village of about 400 persons. It’s a happy place with a good spirit. The average Sunday congregation is around nine. We have two services there a month, along with village weddings, funerals, baptisms and the great feasts of Harvest, Christmas and Easter. We need a large sum of money for tower, roof and stonework repairs and are applying for a Lottery grant. Our parish share is about £8,000. Last year we paid about half of it. In 2026, we won’t be able to pay any of it at all, because our unrestricted reserves are gone. To the Deanery Treasurer it looks like a tiny, failing church, of which there are many.
Parish one is another matter. Its mediaeval church gets its repairs done quickly: a village charity pays for them. We have a toddlers’ group, a large Sunday School and a parish choir, led by a superb director of music, who also directs the community choir. Our parish centre on the High Street buzzes with activity. These things cost money. Our principal expenses are heating, insurance, and salaries, the last paid for by a charitable grant and restricted gifts from some generous people in the parish. It’s a thriving church. The only trouble is, we can’t pay our parish share. In 2024 we were asked for £45,000. We paid it from reserves. In 2025, it was £48,000 and, the reserves being nearly exhausted, we were only able to pay half of it. This year we are likely to be asked for £50,000. That’s nearly £1,000 a week, vastly more than we receive in donations.
The Rural Dean and the Deanery Treasurer seem disappointed in us. Why is the church buzzing with life? Paying the parish share should be our first priority in the eyes of the economists. We seem to be thumbing our collective noses at the Diocesan Board of Finance. It’s the ballad of The Tithe Pig all over again.
