About

The Glebe House of St. Anne's Parish is one of the finest and probably the oldest of Virginia's colonial glebe houses, of which less than a dozen survive. Glebe houses were built on church lands used for the support of the parish. The houses were sometimes rented; more often they served as rectories. It is not unusual for glebe houses to display architectural quality equal to their churches, especially in the brickwork. The St. Anne's Glebe House, located in Essex County's Occupacia-Rappahannock Rural Historic District, probably was begun around the same time as the nearby 1719 Vauter's Church, for the brickwork is very similar. Its first occupant was the diarist the Rev. Robert Rose, who came here in 1725. The property was sold by its parish as the result of the disestablishment and became a private residence known as Cloverfield. At the time of its listing in the registers in the mid-1970s, the Glebe House of St. Anne's Parish had stood vacant since the 1960s.