ABSTRACT
The article records the discovery of pages from an unpublished manuscript of an autobiography by Jean Blathwayt, daughter of the rector of Melbury Osmund, Dorset, the Revd Francis Blathwayt, who held the living from 1916 until 1929. The intention of the article is to extract elements from this fragment that throw light on life in the rural rectory during the 1920s, and to examine these against the broad social and religious context of the period. Jean’s work is also located in the context of what is known from other sources about the family of the Revd Francis Blathwayt. An attempt is made to assess the value of the manuscript from an historical perspective, to link its concerns with a theory of the rural church and to explore briefly its insights into rural theology.
