Memories recalled by William Hanson Braithwaite when aged nearly 100

The Revd. John Taylor, who was our Rector for many years, was troubled with gout. As a boy I laughed at him once when he visited us. He left his pony and trap outside and the pony went across the yard and upset the trap. Taylor saw it through a window and jumped up to run out to it and afterwards remarked “I did not think I could get up and run like that”, and because I laughed he added “You might have gout”, as he had a sister who did not drink spirits and she had it.

Once he scolded me for boxing the ears of two girls. “Never hit a girl” he said. I promised, so he went to the shop and got me a hod of nuts, and we remained good friends as long as he lived.

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From and article by J.Booth in St Guthlac’s Parish Magazine, Sept. 1970

It was around 1900 when the Revd. Taylor was Rector of Stathern, a remarkable man with long white hair and a snow-white beard. I was in the church choir at the time and we used to go to the Rectory to practice at night twice a week, when Miss Mildred Taylor, the daughter, used to take us. But before we started, there was always something to eat on the table such as cakes, oranges or toffee. At that time there were ten to twelve boys in the choir, no girls, and about six men, and in 1902 Miss Mildred presented each boy with a bible. I still have mine which I would show to anyone who would like to see it, signed by Miss Mildred.

The Revd. Taylor would regularly come out of the Rectory with a pocked full of pennies, one for each child he met. Many a time some of us boys would be going up to school by Mrs Morris’s bungalow and glance across the gardens and see him coming out of the Rectory door to come down the Water Lane, when we would make a dash back up by the Red Lion Inn to meet him for the penny we always got, which was very acceptable in those days. And many a time when we were out at play, he would come perhaps with a basket of oranges or apples and sometimes sweets and thrown them over to us to scramble for, and what a game we had and didn’t he enjoy it.

I remember once mother being ill in bed and him making us children go up to the Rectory for our breakfast, dinner and tea for a fortnight and he would go down each day to take mother perhaps a little bit of fish or soup. And didn’t we love what we were not used to in those days.

For being in the choir each boy received half-a-crown a quarter, which was like a little fortune at that time. I was still in the choir when he preached his last sermon in the pulpit. I have never forgotten it. He knew his time had come, and in a trembling voice he recited this poem:

‘I remember, I remember
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in a morn;
He never cam a wink to soon
Nor brought too long a day
But now, I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away.

I remember, I remember
The fir trees dark and high
I used to think their slender tops
Reached close against the sky;
It was a childish ignorance,
But now ‘tis little joy
To know I’m farther off from Heav’n
Than when I was a boy’

It was very soon after this that he passed away.

When Revd. Taylor was buried, the choir followed him to his grave, which is outside the east end of the church, where the cross stands now. He was brought through the little door on the west side of the church out of the Rectory grounds, but no-one had thought about measuring it to see if the coffin would go through, which it would not. When they got to it they had to get two trestles to put the coffin on while they knocked all the woodwork out, door and doorposts, and then there was only about half an inch each side for it to come through, which delayed the funeral for quite a long time. That was the last of a fine old gentleman.