A New Vicarage for Sketty

The new district of Sketty was formed from the large and unwieldy parish of Swansea in 1851. Its new church, St. Paul's, had been built the previous year by the Vivian family of Singleton. It was then claimed that the new church could seat 350 people. This represented a third of the total population of the new district, 1225.

Compensation was paid to the vicar of Swansea for his loss of fees, though J. H. Vivian declined to purchase the Easter offerings of that district from the vicar of Swansea for the benefit of the new incumbent of St. Paul's. These, Vivian argued, were voluntary payments and if he wished he could discontinue them at once, though he had assured the present vicar of Swansea, Mr. Squire, that he would continue to pay him these offerings as a mark of esteem.

Easter offerings were generally regarded as an offering of two-pence per head for all parishioners over the age of sixteen, though it was later defined as communicants. The custom was dying out by the 1850s and was not replaced by the Easter offering as we now know it until much later on in the century when offertories had become more common. John Walters, of 4 Calvert Street, was the parish clerk of St. Mary's, Swansea, and in those days his was an appointment which carried precise duties and legal dues.

He became quite a nuisance for a while, for he too claimed compensation for the fees he would lose through the creation of this new district of Sketty. He appealed for help to the Ecclesiastical Commission. It replied it was unable to give advice on legal questions. Though Walters threatened legal proceedings against J. H. Vivian his own solicitor eventually persuaded him to take no further steps.

The income of the new parish comprised an endowment of £40 per annum given by the Vivian family, and the income arising from renting the pews — there were however one hundred free seats. It was a rather uncertain source of income for a man who wished to be independent in his ministry.

The local tithes belonged to the lay rector of Swansea, Sir John Morris of Sketty Park, and to the vicar of Swansea. There was no vicarage. The incumbents were clearly expected to be men of private means. Bolney received a negative answer when he asked the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in 1866 if they were able to offer any assistance in increasing the value of the living.

The first three vicars of Sketty lived in houses either purchased or rented by themselves. But such a position could not continue indefinitely. The Church was concerned that a parsonage house was provided in each parish, if only to ensure that the incumbent had no excuse for non-residence. Steps were therefore taken not only to provide a house but also to increase the value of the living.

In 1903 the income of the vicar of Sketty was returned as such: in 1894 it was £207, 1898 £164, 1901 £182 and in 1902 £232. The income came from the Vivian endowment, pew rents and surplice fees, the last two being capable of considerable variation year by year.

In 1904, for example, the income was made up as follows: fees £16, pew rents £149, a special collection (at Easter?) £5, and the Vivian endowment of £40, but it was argued that at least £35 had to be deducted for the lack of a vicarage while there were other charges against the income.

W. Graham Vivian, the patron of the living as the last surviving trustee of his father's will — it meant he appointed a new vicar when a vacancy arose — protested to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners about another source of income enjoyed by the vicar.

The new vicar he had appointed, Cecil Lillingston (vicar 1903-8), an evangelical who had a noted ministry in this parish, was burying in a portion of the graveyard Graham's father, J. H. Vivian, had intended to keep free of graves. Vivian wrote that before he had offered Lillingston the living he had told him that the churchyard was full and he could not calculate on the £20 hitherto received from burial fees. But, claimed Vivian, since he had become vicar, he had buried extensively in this area, and received another £60 per annum in fees thereby.

This was clearly an exaggeration. However the Easter offerings rose considerably year by year during Lillingston's time at Sketty, as people wished to express their appreci-ation of his spiritual and evangelistic ministry. In 1904 the offerings came to £4, 1905 £29, 1907 £42. In 1909 during the vacancy they were but £12.

The pew rents rose also in a corresponding way. They averaged out at £162 per annum during his incumbency. Such figures illustrate how, during Lillingston's ministry, this simple village church became 'quite a town church drawing a very large congregation' as the brochure of 1910 put it. A large number of people were attracted from Swansea by his preaching, and to accommodate them a new aisle was built in 1908 with seating for an additional 150 people.

But even this was not sufficient, for morning and evening services were also held in the church hall, which sat a further 400 people. Graham Vivian provided a benefaction of £500 for the parish in 1903, and this was met with an equivalent grant from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, as they were permitted to do as the financial managers of the Church. This allowed an addition to the stipend of £30 per annum.

The same was repeated in 1905 — clearly Vivian bore no grudges regarding the churchyard. Meanwhile the parishioners were active in raising money for a new vicarage. In 1905 subscriptions for this purpose realised £100, and this was matched with a grant from the diocesan fund of £100, and these collectively were augmented with an equivalent grant by the commissioners of £200.

In the following year £50 was collected, and this enabled the same process to repeat itself so that this sum was converted into £200. By the time that Lillingston left the parish in 1908 there was a sum of £600 available for the new parsonage, although the parish itself had only raised £150 of this amount.

A new vicar, D. Alain Jones (vicar 1909-15) managed to lease a site for this new vicarage, a one acre site on Sketty Park Road by the Top Cross. But a problem arose. The rules of the Ecclesiastical Commission would not allow a vicarage to be built on a leasehold site whose annual rental was more than five pounds. In this case the sum required was £12.10s.

A compromise was allowed, however, by which a capital sum could be paid over to the commissioners to meet the annual charge. In the end the ground landlord, Sir Robert Morris, was persuaded to sell the freehold of the plot for the substantial sum of £337.10s.

By this time further sums amounting to £800 had been raised locally by such events and appeals as the great bazaar held over a period of two days in October 1910 at the Albert Hall, Swansea. A galaxy of titled and gentrified patrons was enlisted, and the names duly displayed in the souvenir brochure which boasted articles on aviation, golf, football and old Swansea.

One assumes that each of them gave a substantial donation to appear therein! Stall holders included Mrs. Picton Turberville, Lady Swansea, Mrs. Gerald Eden, Miss Glascodine, Mrs. Talbot Rice — wife of the vicar of St. Mary's, and the Misses Morris of Sketty Park, while a whole bevy of local ladies acted as waitresses in the floral cafe.

Here teas were served at six-pence or a shilling, and dinners, with musical accompaniment, at one shilling and six-pence or half-a-crown. Organ recitals, competitions, displays by the Church Lads' Brigade and concerts took place in the main hall. 'You know quite well', wrote the vicar in his introduction, 'you have always enjoyed bazaars. And why? Because it is ever 'more blessed to give than to receive.'

It is a never ceasing joy to take part in a good work... And you will ask, what is the good work from the helping of which I am to derive such happiness? Well, 'the housing of the poor.' You will all agree that there is no more blessed work than this. And when the poor to be housed happen to be Parsons, they are hardly to be considered exceptions to the rule. It is then to help to house the poor vicar of Sketty than this bazaar is to be held.'

This £800 raised in this and other ways to house the poor vicar of Sketty luckily attracted an equivalent grant of the same amount from the Ecclesiastical Com-missioners in accordance with their rules. Thus the new vicarage was built. It was a substantial house — today it is a nursing home — but at that time the commissioners insisted on a minimum number of rooms: three reception rooms and five bedrooms.

And thus the vicar and his family were able to move into this new house from their existing accommodation, described as 'little more than a cottage'. Was the house too large? Was there a fear that disestablishment — which came in 1920 — would bring about a reduction in the income of the vicar of Sketty?

Might there have been a feeling that pew rents were archaic and should be ended, so that the income of the vicar would drop considerably? The rateable value of the house was £66, which probably amounted to a fifth of the income of the benefice, even though this had been substantially increased by a further endowment of £1,000 by J. B. Edwards of Penallt, Sketty.

The Ecclesiastical Commissioners, faced with a shortage of funds, were only able to offer £500 as an equivalent grant to this. But never-theless it raised the income of the vicar to about £320, made up of £105 from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, fees £5, pew rents £135, Easter offerings £35, and £40 from the Singleton estate, later secured by an annuity when the Vivian family sold that estate to form the site of the new university college.

The new vicar, H. J. Stewart (vicar 1915-41) must have found such a large house impossible to maintain, and by 1920 the vicarage had been sold, for the massive sum of £4,750, and a temporary vicarage leased in Queens Road. The purchase money was invested according to the commissioners' rules, the interest offsetting the rental of the alternative house, and the balance being added to the main fund for the erection of a new vicarage.

This, the present vicarage, was built in the early 1920s, on land purchased by the church from the sale of the Singleton estate. The material from which this article has been drawn is contained in the papers of the Ecclesiastical Commission now belonging to the Representative Body of the Church in Wales.

This also contains a letter of David Price, curate from 1896-1901, who had been appointed curate in charge of Killay. It is worth quoting. Dated 18 November 1896 Price wrote that he had recently come into possession of a 'no man's land', namely a poor but populous district carved out of the areas of Sketty, Bishopston, Llanrhidian and Loughor parishes, but distant from their parish churches by two and a half to six and a half miles.

He had been appointed by the four vicars of the parishes mentioned, but because his base — a national schoolroom — was in the parish of Sketty, the bishop had licensed him to that parish. 'No clergyman has ever worked here before', he wrote, I hold four services a week here and the results already are most encouraging. The schoolroom is full at night and almost full in the morning.'

But he was seriously handicapped by a lack of finances. It was impossible for him with his small stipend to adequately cope with 'the forces of dissent which prevail in this district. I came here six weeks ago with not a single book of any sort to commence service with, no materials of any sort for the Sunday school, and not a penny to commence work with . . .'

Not surprisingly he appealed for financial help, which the commissioners regretted they could not supply, as they were already supporting two of the parishes he had noted in his letter. From these meagre beginnings grew St. Martin's Church, Dunvant.

SOME MORE ABOUT VICAR BOLNEY

Edward William Bolney was the longest serving vicar of Sketty, being vicar for thirty-eight years, 1865-1903. Harry Williams in his centenary history of St. Paul's (1951) notes Bolney's pastoral care, popularity and hospitality.

He records too James Pugsley's description of Bolney as 'an old fashioned High Churchman of the Gladston-ian type'. The main Sunday service with Bolney was the even then old fashioned combination of Matins, Litany and Ante-Communion, together with sermon. The holy days of the Church were observed, Lent and Advent too, while St. Paul's was the first local church to adopt 'Hymns Ancient and Modern', then the hall-mark of tractarian churchmanship.

The harvest festival followed, along with a surpliced choir. The late Mr. J. Escott, a former churchwarden, once told me a story of Parson Bolney's first Sunday at Sketty. He turned east for the creed. The squire (J. H. Vivian) marched up and turned him back again! Bolney's baptism certificate is found amongst the ordination papers of the diocese of St. Davids in the National Library of Wales (SD/0/1345).

He is described as the son of Alexander Royal (sic) and Jean Barbara Brown, of High Street, Stamford, Lincolnshire. His father was a physician. The baptism, at St. Michael's Church, Stamford, took place on 29 June 1840.

We had better record at once that Bolney changed his name from Brown in the late 1860s as a result of a legacy from an aunt. The family may later have moved to Devon for Bolney's Letters Testimonial for ordination were signed by three incumbents of the diocese of Exeter: John Downall, vicar of Okehampton, archdeacon of Totnes and chaplain to the duke of Devonshire; J. H. Gossett, vicar of Northam near Bideford, and T. W. Whale, rector of Dolton, Devon, and principal of the Proprietary College, Bath.

At least one other brother of Bolney's was ordained. He was George Bolney Brown, and he was vicar of Aston Stone in Staffordshire from 1881-1923, being about ten years younger than Bolney. This younger brother attended Bolney's funeral at Sketty, which was recorded by The Cambrian in its edition of 11 May 1906.

Two sisters, the Misses Brown, came from Shaftesbury, and two cousins were there too, Captain Brown from Plymouth and the Rev. Albert Acton who was rector of Brixton Deverill in Wiltshire. While a scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge (his cousin Albert was also a member), Bolney kept a small scrapbook between 1858-61.

This is now amongst the W. R. Watkin MSS at the National Library of Wales. The scrapbook consists of cuttings which relate to a wide variety of subjects, including such matters as arma-ments, astronomy, wines, tobacco and travel, as well as a list of porcelain marks `copied from my father's manuscripts.' Hussey Vivian, the first Lord Swansea, was also a member of Trinity College, and may have got to know Bolney through this association.

Nevertheless between the date of his graduation and.appointment to Sketty by Hussey, as patron of the living, Bolney served as vice-principal and teacher of music at Trinity College, Carmarthen, a church training college for teachers. This appointment gave him his title for ordination as deacon in February 1864 and priest a year later, but before that later year was out Bolney had left Carmarthen and had been installed as vicar of Sketty.

There are three descriptions of Bolney which are worth mentioning, and these allow us further glimpses of this most interesting of men. The first was recorded by the diarist, Francis Kilvert. On 16 April 1872 Kilvert wrote in his diary while staying with his friend Westhorp, the rector of Ilston, during which time Bolney and his sister, Miss Brown, had walked over from Sketty to dine and sleep. 'He has for some unknown reason taken the name of Bolney', wrote Kilvert, unaware of the real facts, 'because he disliked the name of Brown. I think while I was about it I would have taken a better name than Bolney which does not seem to me a bit better than Brown.'

They sat up that night debating one of the hot theological subjects of their day, the Athanasian creed. Bolney took the high church point of view and Westhorp and Kilvert the liberal view. 'I hate arguing', added Kilvert. A few days later Kilvert drove through Sketty, and inspected the church.

He quite liked the church but considered the lychgate 'desecrated by the names of all the snobs in Swansea.' Bolney's predecessor as vicar of Sketty, M. E. Welby, was well-known to Kilvert and is mentioned in the Diary on several occasions. E. G. Williams in his booklet Move On, about church extension in Swansea (1889), suggests that Welby left Sketty in 1865 as he was so 'dissatisfied' with it.

The second description is contained in the reminiscences of Averil Stewart, a grand-daughter of the first Lord Swansea. Her book, Family Tapestry, published in 1961, was kindly drawn to my attention by Dr. Fred Cowley. Bolney's sermons, she wrote, were of 'singular length and extremely dull, so much that a cousin, emerging faint from the ordeal, complained that she had been slain with the jaw-bone of an ass.'

Even worse, Bolney 'sprayed' as well as prayed, with the result that those sitting beneath the pulpit wished they had brought umbrellas. There is also a tradition that-on a Sunday before polling day, Bolney told his congregation that he believed our Lord to have been a Progressive Conservative. Hussey Vivian, who represented Glamorgan in parliament for the Liberal interest, nearly walked out!

The final description comes from David Painting's biography of Amy Dillwyn (1845-1935) of Hendrefoilan (1987), who mentions Bolney's abortive courtship of Amy. She was the daughter of Lewis Dillwyn, Liberal member of parliament for Swansea, a local industrialist and a member of one of the leading county families in Glamorgan.

Lewis's sister, Mary, was the wife of M. E. Welby, so Bolney might have thought there was an interesting precedent in his favour. But the young Miss Dillwyn disliked Bolney's_ personality, considered he read the services too slowly and mumbled the lessons, although she gave him much help in the mission work Bolney had started at Killay in an attempt to stem the tide of dissent there.

By 1870 Bolney was endeavouring to make Amy his wife, using his sister as the bearer of letters and messages. Rebuffed at his first attempt, he replied by letter; repelled, he waited four years, and tried once more. But Amy would not have him, and they parted with Bolney hoping they would remain friends, but promising to remain single as long as she did. Though Amy regarded him as mad, Painting makes clear this was not so, though he considers Bolney to have been insensitive and unwise.

Amy had no wish to follow aunt Mary as a vicar's wife! She thought such a life would be dull and disappointing. On her father's death Amy discovered that her family was almost bankrupt. Losing her home she took lodgings and eventually managed to rescue the Llansamlet Spelter Works and made it into a viable concern.

Bolney retired in 1903 and died, a bachelor, in May 1906. In his only parochial cure he had proved to be a man faithful to his calling, and he well deserved the high regard in which he was held.

This article was written by Roger L. Brown and was taken from volume six of Swansea's Local History Journal, which was originally published in 1998. We'd like to thank Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru – The National Library of Wales for digitally archiving the publication and allowing us to reproduce it here.

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