Samuel Dudley Sedgley
1912-1914
B.A. Classics (1st Class)
Samuel Dudley Sedgley, the eldest son of Samuel Dudley Sedgley and Elizabeth Wilson, was born in 1893 in Southport, Lancashire. He had six younger siblings, one brother and five sisters. The family moved initially to Manchester and then to Burnage, a move which probably coincided with Samuel Sedgley senior taking a position on the staff of the Manchester Evening News.
A young Samuel was able to attend Manchester Grammar School through a combination of scholarships. Initially, in 1906, he was granted a Mynshull Scholarship, a fund originally established to apprentice poor Manchester boys but by the early 20th century used to provide Manchester Grammar School places. He was then granted two foundation scholarships by the school, one in 1907 and another in 1909, enabling him to continue at Manchester Grammar until he finished Sixth Form.
On leaving Manchester Grammar School in 1912, Samuel was able to attend the University of Manchester through an Oliver Heywood Scholarship, a fund established in 1887 to provide successful students with two years funding at £50 per year. During this time, he lived at St Anselm’s Hostel and prepared to take Holy Orders. Samuel graduated with first class honours in Classics in 1914 but circumstances prevented him from being ordained. Unable to become a clergyman and classed as medically unfit each of the three times he offered for Military Service, Samuel instead found work as a teacher. Initially working at Westcliffe-on-Sea High School and Kingston Grammar School, he was by 1917 working at Arnold House School, Westminster. In the same year he married Beatrice Atherton, the 18-year-old daughter of a Munitions worker and sometime afterwards they returned north, where Samuel was appointed to Blackpool Grammar School. His final appointment was to Liverpool Collegiate School.
Samuel Dudley Sedgley died tragically in April 1919 following a stroke. He was 26 years old. His death followed that on his brother, Thomas, also a University of Manchester Graduate, who was killed in France in 1916. In paying tribute to him, Manchester Grammar School wrote ‘He worked not to pass examinations, but because he found his classics supremely interesting… he would not himself have spoken of teaching as a profession: to him it was a vocation.’
Walter Sellers
1907-1911
Ordination Student
Walter Sellers was born in 1887 to a working class family from Macclesfield. His father Thomas- a well known local figure- had married Elizabeth Bullock in 1885, and the couple had five children together before her death, probably in childbirth, in 1896, after which Thomas remarried to Mary Ellen Clulow. The 1901 census records Walter, aged 14, working as a Card Lacer in a silk factory. He lived in the family home at Clowes Street, Macclesfield, with his father, his stepmother, his grandmother and three of his younger siblings.
Whilst a Sunday school teacher at Hurdsfield, Macclesfield, Walter caught the eye of the new vicar Rev. Allworthy. Described by friend and fellow Slemsman Spencer Wade as ‘a devoted churchman with an eye to ordination,’ Walter requested and was allowed to join Wade in his studies with Allworthy. When Allworthy opened St Anselm’s Hostel in 1907, Walter was considered to be too old to undertake a University education but was granted a place at the Hostel to study for ordination. He was ordained as a deacon in December 1911 and appointed to St James’, Gorton, Manchester, being further ordained as a priest in 1913. In spring 1915, Walter was appointed to the curacy of St. James’, East Crompton, in north Manchester, and at around the same time was a chaplain at Strangeways prison.
Walter joined the army in 1917, becoming a chaplain in the Kings Shropshire Light Infantry where his brother, Reginald, already served as a signaller. Sadly, Reginald was killed in September 1918. For his actions in the First World War, Walter was awarded the Military Cross in the 1919 Birthday honours, although he later declared ‘I haven’t the foggiest idea how I won it. It came with the rations like so many others.’
At the end of the war, Walter returned to East Crompton, where he remained until his appointment to St. Mark’s, Hulme, in 1925. A further appointment to St Mark’s Glodwick in Oldham followed in 1928. Walter remained at Glodwick until 1938 when, shortly after his marriage to Ella Wharton, he was appointed as vicar of Northborne, Kent. In 1951, Walter was given a new appointment as vicar Rector of Ringwould, Kent, and Rural Dean of Sandwich. Although ill health forced him to give up the position of Rural Dean after a year, he remained in Ringwould. Among his activities there he was chairman of the local youth club and vice-president of Kingsdown Gardeners society. Forced by ill-health to retire in 1957, Walter and Ella moved to Colwyn Bay, Denbighshire. Walter died there in 1966. He was outlived by Ella who died in 1971.
John Norman Stables
1923-1924
Bachelor of Commerce
John Norman Stables was born in 1904 in Knaresborough, Yorkshire, and was the youngest of the two children of Thomas Stables, a poultry farmer, and his wife Emily Farrar. Although John was born in Yorkshire, by the time he was six the family were living in Burton, Westmoreland. Few records survive regarding John’s childhood survive, however by the age of seventeen he was a boarder at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Kirby Lonsdale, Yorkshire.
After completing school John studied Commerce at the University of Manchester and was a resident of St Anselm Hall between 1923 and 1924. He later recalled that ‘In my time there were only 10 or 12 students… we were all very happy together at St Anselm’s in those days and I do not feel that any old students can look back upon their time there with any but the very richest of pleasant memories…’
After graduating in July 1924, John purusued a career in Accounting. At the time of his marriage to his wife Katherine Robinson in 1931 John was an accountants clerk living in Harrogate, however by 1939 he was a chartered accountant who lived in Scarcroft, near Leeds, with his wife and two sons. A daughter was born in 1945. When he made contact with the hall in February 1950, John wrote of how he had recently changed careers and was now the secretary of an engineering company in Leeds. John died in July 1960, at the age of fifty-six.
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Edgar Stephenson JCR President 1922-23 & 1923-24
Gartness Hostel 1919-1921
St Anselm Hall 1921-24
B.A. History (2nd Class honours)
Born in Tamworth in 1895, Edgar Stephenson was the seventh of the eight children of Thomas Stephenson & Elizabeth Richardson. Thomas- who was a baker and confectioner- died in November 1901, after which the children were raised by their mother. As a young boy, Edgar attended St. Editha’s Church, Tamworth where, as a young man, he became secretary to the Young Man’s Bible Class. Educationally, he attended first Tamworth Council School and later Rugby Council School. By the age of sixteen, Edgar was working as clerk.
During the First World War Edgar served four years in the South Staffordshire Regiment, eventually becoming Regimental Quarter Master. The Vicar of Tamworth (the Rev. E. Rodgers) recalled in 1924 that ‘I heard what a good reputation he had in the Army for his manly, straight, Christian character.’ For his actions during the big push of 1918, Edgar was awarded the Military Medal. The War, however, came at a high cost to the family as Edgar’s eldest brother, Percival, was killed in October 1917 and his second eldest brother, Charles, in April 1918. Edgar had met with Charles near the Front just a few days before he was killed. Edgar’s feelings on the war were expressed during a service at Manchester Cathedral in November 1930, when he is quoted as saying ‘What is considered too coarse to be read must never again have to be lived and witnessed.’
After the end of the First World War, Edgar studied history at the University of Manchester. He was initially a student at Gartness Hall but transferred to St Anselm in the 1921 merger, becoming president of the JCR in the 1922-23 and 1923-24 sessions. Edgar graduated with 2nd class honours in history, and by the time of his graduation had learned Latin, Greek and Hebrew. He had also attracted the attention of the Bishop of Manchester, the Rev. William Temple, who encouraged him to study for a B.D. (Bachelor of Divinity.) On achieving his B.A. in 1924, Edgar was ordained deacon and appointed to Sacred Trinity Church, Salford. In the summer of 1925, Edgar achieved his B.D. and was also ordained priest by his long-term supporter William Temple.
Edgar married Kathleen Taws, a fellow Manchester graduate, in 1926 and at around the same time moved to a new appointment as Vicar of Worsley, Salford. Edgar and Kathleen remained at Worsley until 1929 when he was appointed Vicar of Peel, a post he held for a year. 1929 was also the year that Edgar achieved his M.A. with a thesis on ‘William Prynne’s (1600-1669) Ideal State Church and his views on the Sectaries (Independents).’
From 1930 until 1937 Edgar was Vicar of Weaste with the additional appointment of Chaplain to the Bishop of Manchester (the Rev. Warman) from 1934. Edgar reluctantly left Weaste in 1937, saying in his farewell speech ’A little bit of my heart will always be in Weaste… and I shall always number among my closest friends many of the parishioners whom I have endeavoured to serve, and whom I have come to love.’
After his departure from Weaste, Edgar was appointed to St. Mary’s Wardleworth, near Rochdale, Manchester, a placement which was disrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War, when Edgar was called to serve as a Territorial Army Chaplain. As a part of his role, he travelled with the Lancashire Fusiliers to France and was evacuated with them from Dunkirk. On his return to England, he was appointed senior chaplain at Portsmouth. Edgar returned to his parish at Wardleworth in March 1942, after his curate, the Rev. J. Ruscoe, became an Army Chaplain. In the July of that year, it was announced that he would be made vicar of Swinton, Manchester.
Edgar was made honourary canon of Manchester Cathedral in 1945, an appointment which meant standing down from his previous appointment as Chaplain to the Bishop. In 1947, Edgar left Swinton to become rural dean of Oldham, a post which from 1951 was combined with the role of Archdeacon of Rochdale.
Edgar resigned as Rural Dean of Oldham in 1955 in order to take up a new role as the Director of Religious Education for the Manchester Diocese, a post he again combined with his role as Archdeacon of Rochdale. At the time, the Manchester Evening News described how he would be ‘father’ to 82,000 children across 300 church schools in the Manchester Diocese. Edgar remained in the role until his retirement in 1962, when he was sixty-eight years old. In retirement Edgar and Kathleen lived variously in Penrhyn Bay (Conwy), Safford Waldon (Essex) and Hindhead (Surrey.) Edgar died in May 1984.