Revd. Claud Brown MA, 1850-1929
First Vicar of Verwood and West Moors
| Claud Brown was the third son of John Wyld Brown
and Mary Mackellar and was born at Woolamoolo (?) near Sydney, in 1850. His
father John and family established a successful merchanting business from Leith,
Scotland to Australia; Tea proving a profitable commodity. "They were
Presbyterian and Claud Brown was brought up on the Shorter Catechism. He was a
religious boy and knew his Catechism well but he used to manage always to get
stumped by the last question to avoid being put onto the Longer Catechism!"
Later this Scottish family (their original name was Broun) settled down in
London at Lancaster Gate and the family conformed to the Church of England.
Claud Brown went to school in Highgate and then to Wadham College,
Oxford, where he read Theology, and after a course at St John's College,
Highbury, was ordained deacon in Lent 1874 and priest in Advent the same
year. Claud Brown served curacies at St Leonard's, Hythe in Kent,
Much Wenlock in Shropshire (whilst there in 1875 he married his 2nd
cousin Marion Janet Wyld in London). They went to Harmondsworth in
Middlesex where his first son (Claud) Leonard (a Reader here in West
Moors in 1903, later to become Revd. Canon) was born on 31st July 1879.
Sadly Marion died a fortnight later, after just 3½ years of happy
marriage. |
|
| "Shortly after, my father became curate
of St James' Newlands in West London, where he stayed five years; he
taught me the rudiments of cricket (of which he was very fond) in
Kensington Gardens. When old and blind he had to be read out the
complete scores of all first-class cricket from the Times daily, a job
given to his granddaughter Marion much against her will! Both my
mother and father were devoutly religious. I have a copy of the
Vulgate (i.e. Latin Bible) given to my father in 1864, when he was
fourteen, a proof of the bent of his mind already at that age. In
1887 my father accepted the living of Verwood and West Moors, in Dorset,
where he maintained three churches and three schools almost entirely out
of his own pocket, besides building a new Chancel (1892) and Vicarage at
Verwood, (St Michael & All Angels, pictured right) and a new stone
church at a cost of £8,000 (St Mary the Virgin 1896), and School (St Mary's) with houses for
the Curate and Schoolmaster at West Moors (both pictured below)."
This was particularly altruistic as the West Moors population was very
low at the time. Over 100 years later, the people of West Moors
are still blessed through the school and church building that he
provided in the late 1800's. "Claude Brown was a very high
churchman and indeed used up the not inconsiderable family fortune in
restoring his three churches, as well as those of high church friends,
to a more catholic style." |
|
|
|
|
Claud Brown married again - a Georgina FS Hyde from Hampshire; Verwood's 1891 census, lists the Verwood Vicarage as home to Claud Brown 40, Georgina 35, Claud known as Leonard aged 11, Philip aged 2 and Mary aged 8 months old. There were also five servants; a cook, housemaid, nurse, under nurse (Eliza Jacobs, 13 from West Moors) and a parlour maid. The coachman and his wife lived in the coachman's house together with a 'boarder, 19' from Oxford who was listed as Sacristan (perhaps an ordinand?) - presumably supported by Claud Brown. We know that Claud Brown would only walk on Sundays, often three times on a Sunday, down to Three Legged Cross, All Saints Church, which originally was a metal building built 1893 as pictured below. Here also is Claud Brown's Three Legged Cross School and School House. Revd. Claud Brown left us in 1917 after 30 years, but his foundations remain! |
|
|
|
Please remember Revd. Claud Brown when you enter the churches and schools he generously established! Research by Revd. Andrew Rowland.(All quotations from Revd. Canon Leonard Brown source http://www.my-broun-wyld-stewart-lang-ancestry.org.uk. Photographs from Verwood Historical Society and West Moors Parish websites.) For more information see also St Michael and All Saints churches website. |
