Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Vicars of Sedbergh

St Andrew’s Sedbergh
Written By Richard Cann

Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Vicars of Sedbergh

St Andrew’s Church Sedbergh was different in many ways at the end of the 18th century from its current state. At the north end of the churchyard there were wooden market stalls with a nearby market cross. At the east end there were houses along the length of Finkle Street. The southern boundary was slightly nearer the church than now and to the south of the church was a yew tree under which, according to local tradition, George Fox had preached in 1652. The exterior of the building apart from the south-western corner would be similar to the present one. In that corner, where the 20th century extension is now, there was a lean-to building which served as the local school. There was a clock in the tower and three pre-Reformation bells. Internally the building was whitewashed and there were many differences to the furniture and to the services. The vestry was much smaller with the north aisle stretching up to it and there was no choir vestry. In the south aisle there was neither Upton chapel nor parish room. The boys from Sedbergh Grammar School sat in the chancel. At the western end of the nave there was a gallery built in 1760. The seats in the aisles were benches which faced across the church rather than facing east. In addition to benches there were some box pews in the nave, the largest belonging to the Upton family. There was no organ and music was possibly provided by an orchestra in the western gallery. There were definitely singers who either sat in the gallery or in the nave just behind the schoolboys. The music sung would have been mainly psalms set to well known tunes rather than hymns that are sung today. The services would mostly be matins or evensong with fewer communion services than now. A lengthy sermon would have been the central part of each service delivered from a triple decker pulpit sited just south of the present lectern. There would have been no coloured vestments and the singers would not have been robed as these items of clothing would have been considered as “Popery”. Another difference would have been that dogs could be taken into services but unruly ones were evicted by the dog whipper who was paid by the churchwardens.

Daniel Mitford Peacock was inducted as Vicar of Sedbergh on 9th June 1798. He was baptised on 8th May 1769 in Northallerton when his father was Rector of Danby Wiske near Northallerton. He was admitted1 to Trinity College Cambridge in 1786, matriculated in 1787 and was made a scholar in 1789. He was awarded his B.A. in 1791 and was the Chief Wrangler, top mathematician, in that year. In 1792 he was made a fellow of the college and was ordained priest in Norwich. At some time in his career he became one of the preachers at Whitehall. In 1794 he wrote a book “Considerations on the Structure of the House of Commons”. Also in 1794 he took his M.A. and he became Vicar of Sedbergh in 1798, presumably because he could no longer be a fellow due to the fact that he was going to marry Catherine (Catharine) Edwards. They were married in August 1798 in Norfolk.

He and his wife Catherine had four daughters and three sons baptised in Sedbergh. One of the daughters, Julia, died in infancy and there is a stone flag on the nave floor commemorating her short life in 1811. The churchwardens’ accounts2 reveal that in 1805 and again in 1818 some substantial repair work was done on the church. A plan of the chancel exists from 1821 suggesting there were problems seating all the schoolboys there. The first quarter of the nineteenth century saw the rise of Methodism in Sedbergh and also a group broke away from the church c1821 due to dissatisfaction with the vicar. This faction went on to form what was to become the Congregational Church in Sedbergh. The reason for their defection probably being that Peacock was an absentee vicar for the last twenty eight years of his life and left the running of the parish to a curate. He was a pluralist because in 1812 he was made Rector of Stainton-le-Street (Great Stanton) in Durham and moved there. The Crown was the patron of this Living. The last marriage, burial or baptism he officiated at in Sedbergh was on 28th June 1812. He did not even baptise Florence Upton in 1838 who was the daughter of his most important parishioner. He presumably visited Sedbergh occasionally because in the history of Sedbergh published in 1891 Thompson3 stated that some people then living could recollect him. He died in July 1840 at Great Stainton aged 72 years. However, he died named Cust, rather than Peacock, having assumed the name on the death of his brother also in 1840. Presumably both assumed the name for financial reasons.

One of his sons, the Venerable Edwards Cust, was the Archdeacon of Richmond around 1890. The eldest, Mitford, became a Fellow of Corpus Christi College Cambridge in 1822 but due to ill health moved to Hastings where he died in 1828. Disgrace and tragedy struck the family in 1837 when the third son, George Edwards, was sentenced to death. He was a solicitor and stole over £7,800 from a trust for the wife of his brother Edwards. His sentence was commuted to deportation for life to Australia. However, there he became well known as a painter and was pardoned in 1846 on condition that he did not return to this country. He disappeared around 1856 when he was wanted by the police4 for a theft in Sydney. It seems probable that he returned to England because a George Cust of the correct age featured in the 1861 Census in York and died there in 1873. The Peacocks had at least three other children after moving to Great Stanton, two daughters and a son. The latter, Daniel Mitford, was admitted5 to Sedbergh School in 1837 aged 16 years. There is no record of any of the other sons having attended the school but its records are not complete for the first two decades of the nineteenth century. Catherine Peacock/Cust was living with some of her daughters in the 1861 Census and died in 1865.

The next vicar was Thomas Riddell. He was from Berwick-on-Tweed and went to school in Durham. He was admitted to Trinity College in 1820 aged 19 years, matriculated in 1821 and was made a scholar in 1824. He was awarded his B.A. in 1825, became a fellow in 1827 and took his M.A. in 1828. He was ordained priest in London in 1830 and became a curate in Barnard Castle1 in 1832 although another source stated that he was curate at St Andrew’s Holborn. Venn & Venn1 claimed that he became a curate in St Andrew’s Sedbergh in 1838 before being inducted as Vicar of Sedbergh in 1840. However, the parish registers seem to contradict that he was a curate here as they do not mention that he officiated in any Sedbergh service during 1838-1840. His first entry was on 5th January 1841 when he was recorded as being the vicar and his last entry was on 9th May 1841. For some reason his tenure was very brief and he became Vicar of Masham in 1841. This living was also in the patronage of Trinity College and therefore it is unlikely he had done anything wrong at Sedbergh. He moved to Masham where he lived with his mother, brother and sister. He was a good and popular vicar there, until he died in 1855 and the Riddell Memorial Mechanics Institute was dedicated to his memory.

Having effectively been without a vicar for nearly thirty years, parishioners must have been relieved when George Platt was appointed. He was born in Christchurch, Southwark in June 1806, the son of Thomas and Jane Platt and went to school in Hammersmith. From there he entered Trinity College in 1823 as a pensioner and matriculated in 1824. He was made a scholar in 1826 and was awarded a B.A. in 1828 when he was the third best classic of his year. He took his M.A. in 1831 and in the same year was ordained priest at Lichfield. He left the college to marry in 1833, his bride being Adelaide Louisa Earle who had been born in Hendon in 1808. According to Venn & Venn1 he became a curate at St James, Duke Place, in London but in the 1841 Census he was living in St Marylebone with his family and presumably he was a curate in one of the churches there. He became Vicar of Sedbergh in 1841 according to the sources but did not move to Sedbergh until 1842 because the first record in the parish registers of him officiating at a service was in July of that year. For a family who had lived all their lives in the London area it must have been a cultural shock, particularly as the railway did not reach Sedbergh for nearly another twenty years.

He arrived at a time of educational change in Sedbergh. The old school that had been held in a building attached to the south west corner of the church was replaced by a school opened in early 1842. In order to get the benefits of membership the governors decided to make it a National School. The rules of that society meant that children attending it also had to attend a Church of England Sunday School. This proved too much for non-conformists and so a British School was opened in 1843. At the end of the same year Platt clashed with the Upton family. Thomas Upton died on 23rd December 1843 but was not buried until the 6th January 1844. It was not bad weather that caused this delay but the fact that his widow wanted him buried in the chancel6 to which Platt objected. However, he lost the battle of wills and Upton was buried alongside his father. Soon after he arrived, Platt felt that some work needed to be done to the interior of the church and this was described7 in a previous article. The Vestry meeting of 1843 agreed to his offer to pay for inner doors to the north and south porches so that he could remove a screen at the west end of the nave. The introduction of a barrel organ in 1851 was part of a national trend among parish clergy to try to wrest control of the musical element of services from the singers and musicians who usually occupied the western gallery. However, according to Mrs Vigour8 an attempt to form a good vocal and instrumental choir of young townspeople had floundered in the late 1840s. A new hymn book was introduced in 1854 which would have widened the choice available and the music was further enhanced by the installation of a new organ in 1868. Despite the advances in music whilst Platt was vicar, it is doubtful if he was very sympathetic to the Oxford Movement because the church was not restored until he ceased to be vicar. Even though the restoration was dedicated to his memory he probably would not have agreed with it entirely and indeed his surviving son wrote to the Westmorland Gazette9 hoping that some of the woodwork had been retained – it wasn’t.

George and Adelaide Platt had four sons and five daughters of whom four were born in Sedbergh. All four of their sons attended Sedbergh School although three of them predeceased their father. There is a stained glass window10 to their memory and one of them, Arthur, has in addition a memorial in the church from his fellow officers. There is also a stained glass window in memory of one of his daughters, Mary, and these two Platt windows are probably the oldest stained glass windows in the church. That he installed them shows that he had at least some sympathy with the changes affecting the Church of England. As far as Sedbergh history is concerned his daughter, Adelaide Elizabeth Platt, was the most important of his children. She wrote “The History of the Parish and Grammar School of Sedbergh, Yorkshire” in 1875 and this was extensively used by Thompson3 in his later history of 1891.

Thompson knew Platt personally and obviously both greatly liked and respected him. He mentioned his indefatigable activity, unfailing courtesy and unostentatious acts of kindness and charity. During his tenure of office the parish of Cautley-with-Dowbiggin was formed with its church and parsonage. He was made an Honorary Canon of Ripon in 1876. On the secular front he was made a magistrate and he got on well with Evans who was Master of Sedbergh School until 1861. Platt died in Sedbergh in 1883 having survived his wife who died in 1878.

In the course of its history the parish has had two vicars of national standing, Wigginton in the sixteenth century and Robert Hebert Quick in the nineteenth century. Quick was born in London in 1831, the son of a father who was a city merchant and a mother who was involved in education. After preparatory school he went to Harrow School for one term before ill-health forced him to leave. He was then taught by private tutors until he went to Cambridge. He was admitted1 as a pensioner to Trinity College in 1849, matriculated in 1850, was awarded his B.A. in 1854 and took his M.A. in 1857. He was ordained deacon in London in 1855 and became a curate at St Marks Whitechapel and also the Christ Church Marylebone. He was ordained priest in 1865. However, before that he had begun a life in education being first appointed as a teacher at Lancaster Grammar School in 1858. He afterwards taught in a number of schools including Harrow and became the headmaster of a preparatory school in London and then in Guildford. In 1868 he wrote Essays on Educational Reformers which was a success both in this country and the U.S.A. In 1876 he married Bertha Parr11 the daughter of General Parr and sister of the Arctic explorer Lt. Parr. When Cambridge University formed a Teachers Training Syndicate in 1879 he was appointed as Lecturer on the History of Education. He had always suffered from poor health and he felt in 1883 that he needed a rest and thought that being a vicar in a rural parish would suit him. Sedbergh was not a wealthy parish and Trinity College probably thought they had been fortunate when they presented him to the Living in 1883. Perhaps he chose Sedbergh because he knew the area from his days in Lancaster.

Succeeding a vicar who has been in a Living for such a long time is difficult because the parishioners have got set in their ways and there are always changes that need making which the previous incumbent has lacked the desire or energy to do. The new vicar has to show patience and tact but these were not the strong points of Rev Robert Hebert Quick. During his career he had published his thoughts on education and so going into print was second nature to him but to publish pamphlets to publicize your disagreements with your churchwardens and other local men was not a wise move. He fell out with them over the running of the National School, the Sunday School and the method of electing churchwardens. However, he collaborated in the restoration of the church which was started in 1885. He also fell out with Florence Upton-Cottrell-Dormer because she had restored the Otway monument in the church without getting his approval. There was obviously more to it than that as in her diary12 she wrote “our dislike of each other has been mutual”.

In 1883, before his move to Sedbergh, his daughter Dora was born and during his stay in Sedbergh his son, Oliver Chase, was born in 1885. He found the life of a vicar more onerous than he had expected and this affected his health. He did not have the time for educational writing and also found the responsibility for the religious teaching of his parishioners demanding. He resigned the Living in 1887 and returned south to continue his educational writings. He died on a visit to Cambridge in 1891 but he was interred in Sedbergh. In 1897 his widow installed a ring of eight bells in his memory. Five of these were new and the remainder were the original three fourteenth century bells that had been recast. The issues raised during his stay of vicar are fascinating and will be dealt with in more detail in a future article. Whilst he was in Sedbergh his mother-in-law, Harriet Parr, visited him and left us views of the town.

The next vicar was Rev Joseph Albert Lobley. He was born in Liverpool in February 1840 and went to school1 at the Liverpool Collegiate Institution. He was admitted as a sizar at Trinity College in 1859, matriculated in 1859 and was made a scholar in 1861. He was awarded his B.A. in 1863, was made a fellow in 1865 and took his M.A. in 1866. He was ordained deacon in 1863 and priest in 1866. He left Trinity College and got married to Elizabeth Anne Mais in April 1867. His father Benjamin was a builder and her father a cleric from a Bristol family that had been involved in the slave trade. In the same year he became Vicar of Hamer in Lancashire. Whilst there, in 1870, he wrote The Church and the Churches in Southern India. In 1873 he, his wife and their daughter Mary, born 1868, left for Canada where he was appointed Principal of Montreal Diocesan Theological College. In 1877 he was appointed Principal of the University of Bishop’s College Lennoxville in Quebec. He remained in that post until 1885 and was a success. He was described13 as having brilliant abilities, sound judgement and splendid gifts of teaching and discipline.

In 1885 he returned to England and became the Organising Secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in the Diocese of Ely and Peterborough. In 1887 he became Vicar of Sedbergh. After the turmoil of Quick’s incumbency the parish needed a calming influence and Lobley seems to have provided it. He was responsible for the building of the Mission Room at Millthrop and was involved in the Mission Chapel on the Ingmire Estate at Vale of Lune. Thompson3 obviously rated him highly as he wrote that “he was an eloquent preacher and a genuinely good and amiable man who quickly endeared himself to his flock by his gentle manners, his ready sympathy and his single-minded devotion to their interests”. He had not been feeling well and had decided to take a break from his work but died suddenly in January 1889. His parishioners made a collection in his memory and with the proceeds provided a wooden reredos to the altar and nearly paid for the cost of a new pulpit. In Langtry’s13 view “never was there a nobler or a more unselfish spirit or a more fruitful ministry”. Even Florence Upton-Cottrell-Dormer12 described him as “the much beloved Vicar of Sedbergh” and on hearing that he was ill sent him a pheasant but he had died before it reached him.

The next vicar was Edward Wilton South who was born in 1848 in London the son of Rev Robert South and was educated at St Paul’s School. He was admitted as a sizar1 at Trinity College in 1866 and matriculated in the same year. He was made a scholar in 1867, was awarded his B.A. in 1870 and took his M.A. in 1873. He had left Trinity after obtaining his B.A. and went to teach at Wellington College from 1871-1875. He was ordained deacon in 1873 and priest in 1875. He taught at Christ’s Hospital from 1885-1886 and combined this with the post of Curate of St John’s Wapping. In 1876 he became Headmaster of Blackheath Proprietary School which he combined with being Curate of St Swithin’s, London Stone, from 1883 to 1889. In 1877 he had married Frances Julia Green and they and their two children moved to Sedbergh in 1889 when he became vicar. The elder child was only two at that time and so it seems probable that some children may have died previously. Thompson himself did not comment on his work as vicar but Harrison3 who updated the history in 1910 thought that the most noteworthy event of South’s ministry was the building of the present vicarage. The Vestry minutes14 for April 1892 show that South had sold the old vicarage and was trying to buy two plots of land for a new vicarage in what is now Highfield Road. In the event a site on glebe land near the Union Workhouse was chosen and the new vicarage was built although a clay deposit caused problems and it was not completed until after South left in 1894. It was during South’s period as vicar that Florence Upton-Cottrell-Dormer installed the east window in 1891 in memory of her parents and husband.

According to Harrison considerations of health and the lure of a warmer climate caused South to move south in 1894. After various appointments he ended up as Rector of Reepham with Kerdiston in Norfolk from 1916-1924. Trinity College was the patron and the Living was worth £699 back in 1870, over double the value of Sedbergh at that time and so South had done well for himself. He died in May 1927.

South was succeeded as Vicar of Sedbergh by Douglas Sherwood Guy. He was born in 1855 and went to Tonbridge School. From there he was admitted as a pensioner to Trinity College1 in 1874. He matriculated in 1874, was awarded his B.A. in 1878 and took his M.A. in 1881. He was ordained deacon in Durham in 1879 and ordained priest in 1880. He became Curate of St Andrew’s Aukland in 1879 and Vicar of St Cuthbert’s Gateshead in 1884. From there he became Vicar of Sedbergh in 1894. According to Harrison he “ruled the parish well and successfully for ten years” and the Men’s Institute owed its origin to him. However, his dealings with Florence Upton-Cottrell-Dormer15 cast some doubt on Guy’s judgement. She had built a porch for the cemetery and this was due to be opened in 1896. She received a letter from Guy saying “Mr Cropper is to open my porch which I call ridiculous”. To claim that it was his porch was wrong and also the Mr Cropper that he objected to was in fact the Lord Lieutenant of Westmorland. In the same year he flabbergasted Florence by asking her to remove the east window of the church which she had installed in 1891 in memory of her parents and husband. Keeping her temper she admitted it was too dark but asked who would replace it if she removed it and Guy replied that he hoped she would. She later wrote offering to replace it with clear glass and got a long letter back from Guy. Needless to say the window by Milner remained in place and is much admired by present day visitors to the church. Guy was a Liberal whereas Florence was a Tory and one entry in her diary for July 1895 during a General Election stated that Mrs Guy had called looking nervous and frightened. There had been a row at Sedbergh the previous night and they had threatened to tar and feather an objectionable person. By implication that person was her husband, Mr Guy. In all the above incidents Guy’s side of the story was not told but he had shown little tact in the cases of the porch and window. Perhaps Harrison’s remark that he “ruled” the parish confirmed that side of his character.

He had married Mary Owen in 1881 and they had at least nine children. The 1901 Census showed them living in Sedbergh with six of the children including the youngest, Angela, who had been born there. His wife was responsible for laying out the gardens of the new vicarage and during his time as vicar the choir vestry and new organ were introduced in 1895. He left in 1904 to become Vicar of Christ Church Harrogate, a much more valuable Living. He stayed in that post until 1927 and whilst there also became Rural Dean of Knaresborough and an Honorary Canon of Ripon Cathedral. He also wrote some books, one being Steps Towards Intercommunion. Sacrifice in Holy Communion which was published in 1921.

He was succeeded in Sedbergh by John Montagu Cadman. Cadman was born in London1 in 1855. He attended St Paul’s School and from there was admitted to Trinity College as a pensioner in 1874. He matriculated in 1874, was awarded his B.A. in 1879 and took his M.A. in 1882. He was ordained deacon in 1879 and priest in 1880 in London. He was Curate of St George’s Bloomsbury from 1879–1886 and then Vicar of St Matthew’s Newington in Surrey from 1886–1904 before becoming Vicar of Sedbergh in 1904. He seems to have been a success in Sedbergh because Harrison3 wrote “the various agencies are active and full of life, while the Church services are bright and probably more numerously attended than they have ever been”.

He had married Annie Sophia Mosse in 1886 but they had no children of their own although they did adopt a daughter. He died at Sedbergh in 1916 and there are two memorials to him in the parish. There is a stained glass window10 in the north aisle of the church which was agreed to at a Special Vestry meeting in 1916. There is also a white marble seat on the south side of the hill by Winder House which was erected in his memory by John H. Upton. The existence of these two memorials confirms that he was appreciated by his congregation.

In writing this article I am grateful for help given by Diane Elphick, Christine Greensit of Masham and Jonathan Smith of Trinity College Cambridge. Various free websites have also proved invaluable.

References

  1. J. Venn and J.A.Venn, Alumni Cantabrigiensis
  2. Photocopies in the SDHS archive by kind permission of the late Raven Frankland
  3. W. Thompson, (updated J. Harrison), Sedbergh, Garsdale and Dent, 2nd ed 1910
  4. Bonham & Goodman Auction News, Vol. 4, Issue 2, 2008
  5. Sedbergh School Register 1546-1895
  6. A. Bantock, The Last Smyths of Ashton Court, Part 1, 1990
  7. Sedbergh Historian 2006, Some Restorations of St Andrew’s Church, Sedbergh
  8. Julia Green Vigour, Recollections of Sedbergh School and Town in Early Victorian Days
  9. Letter to the Westmorland Gazette from Rev G. M. Platt, July 29, 1886
  10. Sedbergh Historian 2007, The Stained Glass Windows in St Andrew’s Church
  11. Rev R. H.Quick, The Life and Remains of Rev R.H.Quick edited by F.Storr
  12. A. Bantock, The Last Smyths of Ashton Court, Part 2, 1998
  13. John Langtry, History of the Church in Eastern Canada and Newfoundland, 1892
  14. WPR 59 in the Cumbria Record Office, Kendal
  15. A. Bantock, The Last Smyths of Ashton Court, Part 3, 2002
Richard Cann
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Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Vicars of Sedbergh