The Minister’s Daughter
A historical novel set in 1816 England.
When ten-year-old Henry Wallace climbed a tree in pursuit of a honey-filled hive, he fell and broke his leg. To his surprise, a young girl named Mattie Thorpe rushed to his aid and even attempted to protect him from his bully of a brother. It was the first time anyone had cared for him, other than his tutor, who had not minded that he was the second son of a poor laborer.
He fell in love.
But as he was only a poor laborer’s son, he vowed to do whatever he could to marry Mattie Thorpe, to become a gentleman and rich enough to provide her with the life she deserved.
Mattie Thorpe, a minister’s daughter, reached the age of thirty, and considered herself on the shelf. She lived with her parents at the rectory, well aware that when her father retired, her continued presence would be a burden on them and a strain to her father’s small pension. Since she worked as a healer in their small village, she also knew it was quite unlikely that anyone would wish to marry her.
One day, a one-armed sailor came to their village, acting as an agent for a wealthy sea captain, and everything no longer seemed certain….
Captain Wallace’s House
Though the book is entitled The Minister's Daughter, I confess, I went house-hunting for Henry Wallace's house before finding a church in the area. It had been such a fun endeavor with Lord Wellesbourne... Because I decided to set this book in the county of Kent (the stomping grounds of my junior year abroad at the University of Kent), searching the county for a likely candidate became a pleasurable occupation. I fell in love with Stoneacre in Otham, which is listed as a "15th century, half-timbered Yeoman's house featuring a great hall and crownpost, surrounded by a harmonious garden, orchard and meadows." (Visit Maidstone)
One of its main features that grabbed my attention was this:
How could not one imagine someone opening one door, then fleeing down the corridor and out the other?
An Archaeological Interpretive Survey of Stoneacre, Otham, Kent was of great use as well, for it allowed me to create my own version of Stoneacre: the solar went away, one of the later wings remained, more recent restorations were reversed, and the front of the structure returned to its original version as represented on the cover of the survey itself. The L-shaped building was far too close to the actual Stoneacre for my liking, so it got moved away and blocked from view of the house behind some trees.
The Church
As Mattie Thorpe's father is a minister, I needed to find a church for him. Fortunately, there was a lovely church not far from Stoneacre which had a lynch gate and graveyard in front of the church: St Nicholas of Otham.
St Nicholas in Otham obligingly had the version of the chancel that lived in my head. I had only to set the rectory within easy walking distance of the church, then placed the organ (which could already be there—it was hard to see from the pictures online) in a position more like the one in King’s College chapel in Cambridge.
