The Revd Henry Bowles (1859-1943)
Vicar of Christ Church, Epsom Common, 1912-20

The Revd Henry Bowles in about 1915.
(As confidently understood – see footnote)

Henry Albany Bowles was born on 30 April 1859, the second child (and only son) of – confusingly – another Henry Albany Bowles, Rector of Merrow (near Guildford), and his wife Caroline (née Barlow). After a boarding education and graduation from St John’s College Oxford, Henry junior followed in his father’s footsteps and was ordained in 1868.

His first Curacy – in an unusually nomadic career – was in Andover, at the end of which, in 1884, he married Louisa Alethea Yonge, apparently always called by her second name. She was the daughter of Julian and Emma Yonge of the grand Otterbourne House, just south of Winchester – and her aunt was the prolific and highly-regarded (though now largely forgotten) novelist and writer Charlotte Mary Yonge.

Henry and his new bride moved to Arlington in Devon for him to take up the Rectorship of St James’s. In 1889, the couple moved north for Henry to take up appointment as Curate of St Matthew’s, Burnley. It was here that their first two children (the second being their only son, Reginald – of whom more below) were born. In 1892, the family moved south again, to Louisa’s home village of Otterbourne, for Henry to take up his appointment as Vicar of St Matthew’s. It was here that their final four daughters were born. In 1909, the family moved north again for Henry to take up his appointment as Rector of St Michael’s, Cardeston, Shropshire.

They stayed there barely two years: in 1910, the family moved to Epsom for Henry to take up his appointment as Curate at Christ Church, but effectively Priest in Charge of the fast-growing St Barnabas. (This had been established by Christ Church in 1899 as a Chapel of Ease for the developing north of Epsom, and had just moved from its initial temporary building in Hook Road into the newly-built church in Temple Road. It became a free-standing parish in 1917.)

After 30 years as Vicar of Christ Church and aged 61, Canon Archer Hunter retired at the end of 1911. Henry took over as Vicar from the beginning of 1912, moving into the Vicarage with his family and their four servants. Doubtless helped by being unusually tall, he was sufficiently well-known locally to merit being among the Epsom notables caricatured (by local artist “The Tout“) on the cover of the Epsom Horticultural Society’s 1914 programme, as below.

As arrowed and enlarged, the 1914 caricature of Henry Bowles.

Henry led the people of Christ Church through the increasingly dark times of what was then called the Great War. Indeed, he had early experience of the carnage: his former gardener Arthur Walliker was the first Epsom casualty, being killed in action in the very first British battle of the War – at Mons on 23 August 1914.

Almost Henry’s last act in the parish was the October 1920 dedication of the war memorial in the new chapel he had been instrumental in creating from Christ Church’s North Transept. Sadly, one of the names on the memorial was that of his only son, Reginald (a lieutenant in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers), who had died in France on 20 July 1916 of wounds sustained in an enemy attack earlier in the day. Percy Risbridger (who was Christ Church’s Verger and Sacristan for much of Henry’s incumbency) recalled that the death of Henry’s son “didn’t stop him coming over to Church to say Evensong and it wasn’t until the Intercessions, when he prayed for the repose of the soul of his son, that we learnt the tragic news.”

In the booklet published to mark Christ Church’s Centenary in 1976, Percy Risbridger  remembered him as “a great Priest of God” and that many owed much to his ministry. Percy said that Henry had taught him to appreciate the “mysteries of sacramental worship“, and that it was Henry who instituted the continuing practice of ringing the Christ Church bell when the bread and wine is consecrated “to remind the people on the Common that the Holy Mysteries were being offered on their behalf.”

Henry resigned from Christ Church for unspecified reasons of health and took the less onerous post of Curate at St Mary the Virgin in Bramshott, just over the Surrey border into Hampshire and a mile north of Liphook. He served there from 1921 to 1924, in the last year also serving as Chaplain to the 80-bed King George Sanatorium for Seamen that had recently been established in the nearby Bramshott Grange.

In 1924, aged 65, Henry retired from parish life (although remained active with “permission to officiate” for many subsequent years). He and Alethea may already have been living at “Medlars” in Bramshott Vale, just half a mile from Bramshott’s St Mary the Virgin. It was at “Medlars” that Alethea died on 28 September 1941, aged 76. (In the 1939 Register – when the couple were recorded staying with their daughter Marjorie, who had married solicitor George St John Rands, in Brixworth, Northants – she had been noted as “incapacitated”.) Henry died at “Medlars” on 2 March 1943, aged 83. He left the substantial estate of £26,506 (about £1¼ million at 2021 prices).

Christ Church has no explicit memorial to Henry’s service as its third Vicar. However, given his only son’s fate, what is now Christ Church’s Peace & Reconciliation Chapel is an evocative substitute.

Roger Morgan © 2022

Footnote

When this article was first written in 2015, the only known photograph of Henry Bowles was of him as part of a family group at his daughter’s wedding (at which he had officiated) in Petersfield in Q3 1937. This was 17 years after he left Christ Church, and he was by then aged 78.

Recently, Jon (the son of Frank Pullinger, who was a significant figure in Christ Church’s history) found the photograph at the head of this article among papers he had inherited from his father and kindly donated it to the Christ Church archive.

The unnamed original is a faded sepia and, with its cardboard mount (enough of which is left to see that the photograph was taken by Harrisons of 4 Onslow Place), is very much in the style of photographs from about the time of WW1.

Comparing the two images (as below), it seems certain that the newly-found photograph is of the 20 years younger Henry Bowles, who would have been in his late 50s at the time.

Left: the 78 year old Henry Bowles – Image courtesy of Libby Hall © 2016
Right: Confidently understood to be Henry Bowles in his late 50s