Tombs and Church Living

I have spent the day looking for Charles Thomas Newton on the Welsh borders in a hamlet called Brewardine. Peter and Sarah gave me great hospitality and joined me on an adventure to pinpoint where Mary Severn met her future in-laws when Charles took her there after their engagement in July 1860. A line or two may be added to the forthcoming co-edited biography on Newton, which is almost finished!

St Andrew's Church, Brewardine

Newton’s father Newton Dickinson Hand Newton (1778 - 1853) was a clergyman, as his somewhat disreputable father had been, but lived with his grandmother and step-grandfather, the Bishop of Bristol. Newton was therefore part of an Anglican establishment but observed:

My second name when I was christened was Thomas in the fond hope and belief that I might grow up a pillar of orthodox like the Bishop whose name I inherited! How dreadfully shocked would my father have been if he had known the state of mind into which I have finally gravitated! (Newton 1886, ‘Sketch of Life’. BC – Severn)

Newton was born in 1816 at Ferney Hall in rural Shropshire and christened at the thirteenth-century St Cuthbert's church Clungunford on 15 September by his father. In 1830, Newton Dickinson Hand Newton became Vicar of St Andrew’s Brewardine and Rector of Brobury, a rural parish with a Saxon-Norman church near Hereford on the banks of the River Wye, over which the large vicarage looked.

See side image. Now it is surrounded by somewhat neglected orchards full of crab apples, red apples and pale pears. The vicarage itself is Grade II listed and we got a side view of the drive and building. It is no longer in use as a vicarage.

After his father’s death, Brewardine remained the family home as his elder brother became vicar there until his death in 1862, after which his mother and sisters lived in The Cottage, or Brewardine Hall.

This rather magnificent stained glass windor was paid for in memory of Rev. Newton

Dickinson Hand Newton by the parish in 1854, while a hard to read grey tombstone on the wall on the right of the altar marked his death, as well as that of his 17 year old daughter Georgiana in 1837 and his wife Julia in 1866. No mention was made of Newton's brother William, bar on the roll of vicars, and we could not see any reference to his sisters Julia Louisa (d. 1886) or Catherine (d. 1896) in the Churchyard.

The living of the parish remained in the Newton family's patronage until 1918: this meant they had the right to choose the incubant vicar for the parish, which suggests that Newton's father paid for the living and bought land in the parish, very possibly The Cottage, in 1830. Newton was himself agnostic and was often scornful on his travels of religious faith or fanaticism, unlike his wife Mary Severn who had a sincere Christian faith.

12 Oct. 1864 The consequences of having walked too far -

Mary was fond of Brewardine and arranged for her sister Eleanor to live there on and off after her marriage. Its rural remote location would have been the opposite to what her teenaged

sister and Mary herself would have been used to in busy Pimlico.

Mary enjoyed walks and riding with her sisters in law and made this sketch of herself and Catherine or Julia riding out to Arthur's Stone in 1864. Charles had decided to walk up the steep and windy hill to this 5,000 year old neolithic tomb. He is shown by Mary (above) lying in exhaustion across the table. I decided not to do the same and sit more sedately at the edge to preserve my dignity: a rare occurence, admittedly.

With massive thanks to Peter and Sarah (below) - an early birthday treat!