The Baptist church was a powerful presence in late 19th and early 20th century Chalford. It attracted a large congregation, both from the immediate village and from further along the valley, in Frampton Mansell, where Charles Clark, JP, a great benefactor to the Baptist cause, lived in a fine house called the Downs.
I decide to pay a visit to the Archives in Gloucester, where I know there to be a deposit of Baptist records, to see whether anything throws any light on the individual men from the Tabernacle who left the security of their life here for the violent and unpredictable field of war. The Archive catalogue can be searched online these days, which is handy. What has also changed since my last visit to Alvin St many years ago is the system for requesting documents, which can only be done once an hour now. I arrive, typically, five minutes after the magic moment. Still, gives me time to absorb the atmosphere (determined concentration).
The minutes of meetings during the relevant period would be of huge interest to anyone studying the form and content of non-conformist services during the early 20th century. I, however, find my eyes skidding unaccountably across the formulaic accounts of texts preached on and hymns sung, ending with thanks to the members who sang or played music (usually Beryl Smart, LRAM, on the pianoforte). I have obviously misunderstood the nature of the Baptist minutes book! Every now and again, however, the outside world does intrude. On October 4th 1914: “It was decided to have a Roll of Honour so as to inscribe the names of our members upon it who have gone to the war”. On July 16th 1916: “A vote of sympathy and condolence was proposed by the Secretary and seconded by Mr TC Richens for the loss which he had sustained in the death of his youngest son Private Eber (sic) Webster who was killed in France.” Another such vote was passed on November 12th that year, to Mr Frank Griffin on the death of his son David “who was killed at the Front” and on December 17th to Mr and Mrs JW Workman of Cowley near Cheltenham, whose son Willie, formerly of France Lynch and a member of the church, had been killed in action. Possibly these formal recognitions of loss were comforting, though (to me with my modern sensibilities) they seem rather distant. In March 1917, JH Legg Esq (Military Representative of Cirencester and District) visited to give “a very able and instructive address on his visit to France and the trenches”. On October 14th 1917, sympathy is being expressed to Mr Charles Pearce “in the sad news he had received” about the wounding in the head and face of his son Harold (Harold does not appear among the dead, one can only hope that he made a decent recovery and wasn’t too disfigured). On September 8th, 1918, “the Secretary announced the death of Pte Albert King a former member and voiced the sympathy of the members”. That is it – the only references in four and a bit years to the cataclysmic events shaking the world outside the Tabernacle. What makes this seem stranger is that quite a few of their active members were lost during these years.
Thankfully, the Annual Reports of the Baptist year, 1913-20, provide a little more human interest. Written every January, in review of the events of the past year, they give some insight into the effect of the war on the congregation. The report dated January 1916 refers to 1915 as ‘a year unparalleled in bloodshed and war lust’, but is ‘glad to say that the war has not touched the peace of our churchyard’ – a fact it rather poignantly attributes to the power of prayer. Another paragraph relates that ‘much interest was awakened in our Pastor’s sermon in which was mentioned the alleged appearance of the Angels at Mons’ (a popular and persistent myth at the time, which seems to be traceable to a short story by Arthur Machen).
1917’s report is far more raw:
Sorrow has filled our hearts as the news of one and another snatched from us, lads who have been with us in our prayers and hopes from their childhood.
On July 23rd, there was a large and well-attended memorial service for Harry Taysum, Frank Arnold and Heber Webster. In November, there was another service to remember Mrs Verrinder, a Sunday school teacher who had recently died, and David Griffin, ‘one of our members who had been killed in action’.
In January 1918, 13 church members are ‘serving with the colours’. The opening paragraphs mention how letters from those at the front ‘tell us that the writers believe that they owe their safety to our prayers. Most of these men are relying on us as a congregation to pray for them.’ Unfortunately, despite these prayers, on October 28th there is another memorial service, this time mourning the deaths at the Front of Charles Pidgeon and Frank Shilham.
Obviously, by the time the next report comes due in January 1919, the war is over. The walls of the Baptist schoolroom ‘are adorned with photographs of some of our old boys. We thank Mrs Carter [the Pastor’s wife] for her loving thought in making this collection. These in time should be cherished and valued as among our most sacred possessions.’ The report continues:
The war robbed us in 1918 of two of our members. Albert Griffin fell in action. He was one of those who had early dedicated his life to our Lord. His was one of those faces thoughtful, bright, frank, fearless that an artist would delight to picture as an ideal typical English Crusader. If any man went to the front impelled by duty, impelled by the sense that he was fighting for righteousness, freedom truth and liberty our brother Albert was one. We grieve for the loss of one who had such potentialities for service in Christ’s World but we are proud of his record proud that such a man was among our members.
This lovely testimony, so much of its time, is almost the only character sketch we have from this source. None of the others are written of in personal terms at all, and the other lad to die in 1918, Albert King, is described far more concisely: ‘he had by his quiet, consistent life won his way into our hearts.’
Juliet spotted a picture of Chalford Tabernacle senior branch of the International Order of the Good Templars, 1911, in one of Stanley Gardiner’s compilations of old photographs (The Archive Photographs series: Chalford to Sapperton, Chalford Publishing Company, 1995). It shows about forty men and women, many of them resplendent in arcane-looking sashes, all looking very serious. Roughly half the men sport the remarkable moustaches so fashionable at the time. Everyone in the photograph is identified. Less than eight years later, seven of those young men would be dead, victims of a war none of them could have forseen on that day in 1911. It’s an odd sensation, peering into those faces, all intent on the photo being taken. It’s strange to see the names on the memorial brought to life, in all their ordinariness, their slight vanities (those moustaches!), their neat clothing. They look straight out at you, of course they do – that’s one of the conventions of photographs of the time. They meet your gaze. You feel you have a duty to them. Trevor Webster. William Gardiner. Albert Griffin. Percy Tyler. Charles Herbert. Albert King. Charles Pidgeon.
The Great War and Chalford 