Vestry Vestry A vestry was a committee for the local secular and ecclesiastical government for a parish in England and Wales, which originally met in the vestry or sacristy of the parish church, and consequently became known colloquially as the "vestry". For many centuries they were the sole civil government of rural areas. At the high point of their powers, just prior to removal of Poor Law responsibilities in 1834, the vestries spent not far short of one-fifth of the budget of the national government itself. Their secular and ecclesiastical duties were separated under local government reforms in 1894. Their ecclesiastical
What a Piece of Work What a Piece of Work What a Piece of Work is a 1999 verse novel by Australian poet Dorothy Porter which was shortlisted for the 2000 Miles Franklin Award. In an address to the Tasmanian Writers' and Readers' festival in August 1999, Porter stated: "This is a verse novel in the voice of a male psychiatrist, Doctor Peter Cyren, working in Sydney's Callan Park Mental Hospital in the late 60s, who goes from pretty bad to heinous worse. My model here was Shakespeare with his black-hearted but full blooded creations such as Macbeth and Iago. The challenge is to make