Taylors bells at St Uny church Lelant

Sticking with the holiday connections, on my final day in Cornwall I stopped off the church in Lelant on the hunt for the grave of one Bernard Walke,* an English Anglican Priest, who spent most of his life in Cornwall, in just three parishes. Now, the reason I went looking for this grave was because a few days earlier I had been at another church, this one in St Erth, where I'd come across information about, and the grave of one Annie Fearon Walke,** an artist living in Cornwall, who was born in Surrey, and who married Bernard. 

I'm sure you can see why I was interested in Annie in the first place: with a name like Fearon, was there any possibility that she was related to Henry Fearon, rector of Loughborough 1856-1885 who was born in Cuckfield, (which is bizarre because as I type this, Phil and Kirsty on Location, Location, Location are just taking a couple to Cuckfield!). A bit of research done later at home has not yet proved a connection with Henry, but there may well be, and I would find it were I to go back far enough.






Anyway, back to Bernard. The church in Lelant is a beautiful little church, overlooking the golf course and the River Hayle, and has many interesting internal features and artefacts. 

Part of what is known as the old churchyard has been designated as a 'living churchyard', which seems to mean the plants are left to take over, making memorial stone hunting quite difficult. 









Luckily, Bernard Walke was a prominent enough figure to be listed on an information board along with the position of his grave, so I managed to find it relatively easily amongst the plants. 

Having done this, I then went into the church hall which was open and serving refreshments. As well as being a meeting place the hall hosted a heritage display, showing all the research that had recently been done. One thing that I had noticed whilst looking around the local churches was the extensive information about some things like the stained glass, or the tiled floor, or the ceiling, or the Victorian restoration, but there was often a lack of information pertaining to the bells within the bell tower. 

















Anyway, idling around the displays, my eye was caught by one noticeboard that seemed to be bell-related. Closer inspection revealed that indeed there was information about the bells - lots of photographs, newspaper cuttings and an order of service. Hang on, an order of service, for what exactly? Ah, a re-dedication service for the bells. This was pinned open at its middle pages, but I was able to look more closely, and discovered that some of the bells had been re-cast in 1952, by Taylors of Loughborough! The original bells had also been cast by Taylors, but in 1836 in Oxford, a few years before the first member of the Taylor family came to Loughborough. A great find!! 

The little booklet about the church (St. Uny, Lelant: the story of the parish church of St. Uny Lelant) which I also found (and bought!) had this to say:

The Bells

The peal comprises six bells, in the key of G-sharp.

Treble. Wt. 3 cwts. 2 qrs. 20 lbs.
Inscription:- "Taylor, Oxford 1836
restored 1952. Evelyn Barker and H.P Hurrell (Churchwardens)"

Second. Wt. 4 cwts. 0 qrs. 0 lbs.
Inscription:- "Taylor, fecit, Oxford 1836"

Third. Wt. 4 cwts. 3 qrs. 5 lbs.
Inscription:- "Taylor, Fecit, Oxford 1836
Obey our call the right the good old way
(Shun Schisms, wiles;) nor from it ever stray".

Fourth. Wt. 6 cwts. 0 qrs. 20 lbs.
Inscription:- "Taylor, fecit, Oxford 1836. Restored 1952
Rev. E.J. Davies-Freme, Vicar.
P.A. Clifton, Ringer's Capt."

Fifth. Wt. 6 cwts. 1 qrs. 25 lbs.
Inscription:- "Taylor, fecit, Oxford 1836."

Tenor. Wt. 8 cwts. 2 qrs. 12 lbs.
Inscription:- "Taylor, Oxford 1836. Mr William Bosustow, Churchwarden.
Glory be to God on high, The day of rest again comes round.
A day to all believers dear. The silver trumpets loudly sound,
That call the tribes of Israel near. Ye people all, obey the call,
And in Jehovah's courts appear".

Thre treble and the fourth re-cast, the peal tuned and re-hung with new fittings by John Taylor & Co., Loughborough, in 1952.
The bells were dedicated by The Lord Bishop of Truro, The Right Reverend E. R. Morgan, M.A. on Saturday, 31st May 1952.
The fifth bell was recast and returned in 1955. 

And then I spotted a bookcase in the church hall, full of books about the area, and books to interest children whilst their parents were indulging in a spot of refreshment. The book that caught my eye was, of course, a Ladybird book!

When I got home, I had a look around the Taylors bellfoundry website, and was astonished to read under their current projects that one of their works in progress is again with the church of St Uny in Lelant! 

And so, ended my Cornwall holiday, from whence I made my way to Bristol, and in the following week visited Peterborough and London - and made yet more Loughborough connections!

You are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follow:

Dyer, Lynne (2018). Taylors bells at St Uny church, Lelant. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2018/07/taylors-bells-at-st-uny-church-lelant.html  [Accessed 29 July 2018]

Take down policy:

I post no pictures that are not my own, unless I have express permission so to do. All text is my own, and not copied from any other information sources, printed or electronic, unless identified and credited as such. If you find I have posted something in contravention of these statements, or if there are photographs of you which you would prefer not to be here, please contact me at the address listed on the About Me page, and I will remove these.

Thank you for reading this blog. 

Lynne

    

* St Hilary is also a church associated with Bernard Walke.

** Annie Fearon Walke also has a Facebook history (under Anne, rather than Annie).
     

The Loughborough Legend

The Loughborough Legend, staged production

So, I've just been to a staged production of a play at the Cope Auditorium, and hot footed it home so I can write this blog post quickly, whilst the thoughts are fresh in my mind!

The story was researched and written by Pamela Roberts - author, historian, and new playwright! 

Imagine it, a battered, forgotten suitcase, handed down a couple of generations. When opened it was found to contain an array of papers, articles and photographs, documenting the life of a fascinating man, a man who was born in Antigua, to a white father and a black mother, who made the difficult journey to Washington, via New York, to study law and classics, before attending at Yale for a year and then studying Semitic Languages at Harvard. As if that weren't enough, he then went on to study at the Episcopal Seminary in Cambridge Massachusetts for a year and then spent two years at Jesus College, Oxford, where he gained a BA in Theology and a Diploma in Anthropology (the first black student so to do).

James Arthur Harley was born in Antigua in 1873. He had a desire to learn and do well for himself, hence the travel to the States and the UK to study for various qualifications. Once he had gained his degree in theology, he became a curate, and then a priest, before training as a toolmaker to support the UK during the First World War, and finally becoming a local politician.

He held various positions in the church in various locations - Shepshed, Marshside in Canterbury, Deal in Kent - before settling in Shepshed and becoming a local councillor.

The staged production at the Cope Auditorium, put on by LU Arts, and involved a cast of six or seven, reading from their scripts, covered the life of James Arthur Harley, and his wife.

What was most interesting to me was the relationship James had with his wife, Josephine Maritcha Lawson, a young lady of very good family - the Washington elite, in fact - whom he met in Washington when he was studying for his law and classics degree, and was choirmaster in the church attended by the young Josephine - she was 17, he some 12 years older. Josephine's mother did not approve of the developing relationship between her daughter and the tempestuous Harley, but Josephine traveled to Oxford to be with Harley and became his wife in 1910. 

She was enthralled with Oxford, and felt at home in the city, there being people of wide ranging backgrounds all around them. On the night of the 1911 census, Josephine and James were boarding with the Young family at Eason in Wells, Somerset. Moving to Marshside in Canterbury was quite difficult for poor Josephine, Marshside being a tiny village outside of Canterbury, rural and quiet. She had no friends, apart from James' parishioners, and as James spent so much time away from home visiting these people, she felt isolated and lonely. 

As a qualified teacher, and daughter of a man who was regularly at the White House fighting for the emancipation of the black people, long before Martin Luther King in the 1960s (1), and of a woman whose family established the Frelinghuysen University (2) and who taught, travelling the world lecturing, Josephine felt unfulfilled by the drudgery of keeping house and home. This may well have changed with the birth of Josephine and James' son, Arthur, but sadly his life was cut short. The impression from the play was that the relationship between Josephine and James never really survived Arthur's death, and Josephine went back to America, alone, never to return.

Heartbreaking story on many fronts. It's difficult enough bringing children into the world today when relatives live only 200 miles away: trying to imagine the loneliness that Josephine must have felt as a young black woman, in a tiny English village, having just lost an infant is almost impossible. 

That neither of them re-married is, I think, significant. I think fundamentally, they always loved each other, were devastated by the death of their son, but perhaps had little support or understanding from those living nearby, and James's calling taking him away from home for so long and so often would have meant they would have struggled to support each other and come to terms with their loss. Maybe the story would have had a different ending if James and Josephine had been born and brought up in the UK. Who knows.
            
Josephine resumed her teaching in the US, and died in 1934, being buried next to her father's grave. James became a councillor for Shepshed in 1934, and died in 1943, being buried in the Oaks in Charnwood cemetery. 

The lychgate of Oaks in Charnwood church

The path to the church

Harley's grave in the middle distance

Harley's grave

Harley's grave

Harley's grave

Harley's grave

Close-up of the roses engraved on Harley's grave

(1) For a biography of Jesse Lawson see the this article.

(2) For a brief history of the Frelinghuysen University see this heritage trail.

You are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follow:

Dyer, Lynne (2017). The Loughborough Legend. Available from: http://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-loughborough-legend.html [Accessed 7 May 2017]

Take down policy:

I post no pictures that are not my own, unless I have express permission so to do. All text is my own, and not copied from any other information sources, printed or electronic, unless identified and credited as such. If you find I have posted something in contravention of these statements, or if there are photographs of you which you would prefer not to be here, please contact me at the address listed on the About Me page, and I will remove these.

Thank you for reading this blog. 

Lynne