a church room for storing clerical vestments and for meetings and classes
► uses
Uses:
Baldrick: Well, what about this priest?
Blackadder: Tell him to take his sacred backside out of here, and what's more, if he comes begging again, tell him I shall report him to the Bishop of Bath and Wells, who drowns babies at their christening and eats them in the vestry afterwards.
BBC. Blackadder, season 2: Money
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All cathedrals and nearly all churches were cross-shaped. The cross was the single most important symbol of Christianity, of course, but there was a practical reason too: the transepts provided useful space for extra chapels and offices such as the sacristry and the vestry.
Ken Follett. The Pillars of the Earth, p.294 (1990)
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He thrust the catechism into his pocket, and stopped short, balancing the heavy vestry key between his two fingers.
Gustave Flaubert. Madame Bovary
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I conceived the idea that the time when the banns were read and when the clergyman said, "Ye are now to declare it!" would be the time for me to rise and propose a private conference in the vestry.
Charles Dickens. Great Expectations (1861)
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We had an adjourned cause in the Consistory that day—about excommunicating a baker who had been objecting in a vestry to a paving-rate—and as the evidence was just twice the length of Robinson Crusoe, according to a calculation I made, it was rather late in the day before we finished.