Alfred Pott was vicar of St Helen’s, Abingdon, from 1867 to 1875 and was appointed archdeacon of Berkshire in 1869 while at Abingdon. Though his was a short incumbency compared to his predecessor Nathaniel Dodson’s forty-two years, he too left his mark on the town. He had new church schools built in the town centre, and commissioned the well-known church architect Henry Woodyer to design and carry out a major rebuilding and restoration of St Helen’s which was largely financed by him and his family. At the same time, he revitalised church life in a number of ways and began an association with Abingdon School as chairman of its governors which continued for over thirty years. Pott wrote Memoirs of my life, 1822-1903 as a typescript intended solely for his children, but a surviving copy came to light a century after it was written and has provided much of the material for these articles. The articles concentrate on the time Pott spent in and around Abingdon.[1]
Alfred Pott was the second surviving son of Charles Pott, listed in 1841 as living at Newlands near Bromley in Kent and of independent means and, in 1851, as a merchant and the treasurer of the Foundling Hospital in Gray’s Inn Road, London. He also ran a family business with his brothers. Alfred’s mother was Anna, née Cox, eldest daughter of Samuel Compton Cox, a leading lawyer. Alfred’s father had succeeded his father-in-law, Samuel Cox, as treasurer of the Foundling Hospital and, as treasurer, he had the use of the large, comfortable house that Alfred had known as a child when visiting his Cox grandfather.
Alfred Pott was educated at Eton and Oxford, ordained in 1846, and served as a priest for over fifty years. An expert on ecclesiastical law he was elected in 1853 a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. Bishop Samuel Wilberforce made him an honorary canon of Christ Church, Oxford, and in 1869 appointed him Archdeacon of Berkshire when the post fell vacant. In this position he acted as assistant to the Bishop of Oxford in the Berkshire parishes of the diocese.
Looking back a little regretfully in his Memoirs on his time at Eton and Oxford, Pott comments that he was always second and never first and got only second-class honours in Greats [Classics]. He puts this down to his “natural want of energy mainly arising from physical causes” (which he does not explain any further) and the difficulty he had “in giving settled and continuous application to any subject”. The first, leading to recurrent bouts of ill health and exhaustion, was to plague him all his life and cause him to take occasional weeks or months away from work but, from comments by his contemporaries, it would be difficult to accuse him of a lack of energy and application in any of the positions he held.[2]
Bishop Samuel Wilberforce ordained Pott, and appointed him as incumbent of Swallowfield, Berkshire. He held this post for less than a year before Wilberforce appointed him first curate and then vicar and rural dean of Cuddesdon, Oxfordshire, where he stayed from 1847 to 1858. In 1852 Wilberforce gave him the task of setting up a residential theological college, an innovation at the time and one that established a pattern for the theological education of parish clergy despite some initial resistance. The college buildings were designed by G E Street, the recently appointed diocesan architect, and erected on land opposite the bishop’s palace in Cuddesdon. Street also designed the new vicarage. The college was completed in June 1854, and Pott was appointed by Wilberforce as its first principal. He also served for many years as one of Wilberforce’s examining chaplains, a post he continued to hold even after the bishop moved to the see of Winchester. Wilberforce was careful to select able men as archdeacons and rural deans and Pott, as one of his protégés, promoted the high standards Wilberforce expected at the college.[3]
Pott lectured and published sermons during his time at Cuddesdon; his Confirmation Lectures, published in 1852, before the College opened, remained in print for over thirty years. The college aroused initial opposition to what were described as its ‘Romanising practices’. This was a time of controversy within the Church of England when the evangelical movement, which dated back to the previous century, was being challenged by the high church Oxford movement with its emphasis on the importance of ritual and the architecture that went with it, and which Evangelicals were vehemently against. Wilberforce had to intervene in defence of the College, but this allowed Pott and his immediate successor to establish its place in theological education.[4]
After Cuddesdon, Pott served for significant periods in four parishes in south Oxfordshire and north Berkshire. Wherever he served, he always worked to improve the facilities for his parishioners and to leave the parish properly provided with schools and with the parish church restored. Wilbeforce had strengthened church education with the diocesan teacher training college at Culham that he established in 1852, and Pott always gave priority to the provision of good church schools over church restoration, though both were necessary.[5]
In 1855, while at Cuddesdon, Pott married Emily Harriet, (1835-1903) daughter of Joseph Gibbs, vicar of Clifton Hampden. During their long marriage they had five daughters and five sons all of whom grew to adulthood. Joseph was a younger brother of William Gibbs who managed the very profitable family guano business. William commissioned several leading architects over a number of years to create Tyntesfield, the great Gothic revival country house near Bristol that is now a well-known National Trust property. He was also a notable religious philanthropist, and Gibbs money was significant in what Pott was able to do in his various parishes, particularly at Abingdon.[6]
Pott resigned from Cuddesdon in 1858 suffering from one of his periodic bouts of ill health. When he resumed his ministry after a break of a few months he moved to East Hendred, near Wantage, as vicar. There he found that not only was there “no School worth anything” and “the Church in a miserable state” but that “the squire, Eyston, was Roman and many of the same persuasion”. His response was partly a very practical one: “We began work by building Schools and attempting to train a choir.”
In his memoir, Pott uses ‘we’ rather than ‘I’ not only when writing about his wife and family, as one would expect, but also often when referring to his building projects. This perhaps suggests that his wife and her family contributed some Gibbs money to the school building and church restoration as well as supporting him in his parish work.
After the East Hendred schools were built, Pott asked the well-known church architect Henry Woodyer to draw up plans to restore the church. Woodyer had some private means and only worked for clients he knew personally, never advertising his services. Pott had very probably met Woodyer through J S Bowles of Milton Hill, which is close to East Hendred. Woodyer was an Eton contemporary of Bowles and married his sister and, in 1849-51, he had restored the parish church at Milton, where Bowles was a churchwarden. Another contact could have been William John Butler, vicar of Wantage, who Pott would have known, and for whom Woodyer had designed a school in 1849-50.[7]
Pott recalls that “In July [1860] we began the restoration of the parish church under Henry Woodyer”. After some setbacks, the restoration and enlargement were completed a year later and “it became and still is a very good specimen of a village Church”. A year later, while remaining at East Hendred, Pott was appointed Rural Dean of Abingdon taking over from Nathaniel Dodson, the long-serving vicar of Abingdon, who still retained the Abingdon post.[8]
Pott succeeded Dodson as vicar of Abingdon after Dodson gave up the position in February 1867 due to old age and infirmity. Pott and his wife were sorry to be leaving East Hendred and he comments that he “thought the people were sorry to lose us”. They presented the Potts with a silver tea and coffee service as a leaving gift, demonstrating the extent to which Anglicans in a village that had long been presided over by Catholic squires could be energised by an active and engaged vicar.[9]
He was hesitant about moving to Abingdon – there was no vicarage and “the loss of income was not inconsiderable” – but was “strongly urged” by Wilberforce to accept. This again suggests that Wilberforce, knowing that Pott had some private means, wanted him to serve in parishes it would be difficult to get other good candidates to accept. Dodson had chosen the building plot for a parsonage house in a prime position on what is now Park Crescent, and Edwin Dolby, the Abingdon-based architect, had designed a large house with stables and a coach house, but it was still to be built. “Money was raised ̶ an appeal for funds had reached some £2300 by June 1867 ̶ and “a very good house was built from Dolby’s plans”. Pott appreciated the convenience of Dolby’s design after he and his wife moved into the house late in 1868 with their (then) eight children and a staff of two governesses, three nurse maids and a housekeeper, cook, parlour maid and two housemaids.[10]
Pott immediately started improving the facilities in the town. Dodson had already done much in the very large St Helen’s parish by getting chapels of ease built in Shippon and Dry Sandford and establishing a new town church, St Michael’s, to serve the growing population in the west of the town. But for Pott, “The schools were beneath contempt. …. Our first important Parish work was to build Schools.” He organised the construction of church schools on a cleared site in Bury Street donated by Christ’s Hospital, the main town charity. They cost £1250 and were funded through voluntary subscriptions and a Privy Council grant. The schools were built in 1868-9 to Edwin Dolby’s very practical no-frills design. The girls had the ground floor schoolroom, the boys the first storey schoolroom with its separate outside staircase entrance, and there was an attached single storey infants’ schoolroom. The three schools had their own separate yards. Writing over thirty years later, Pott notes that “they have done excellent work up to this time”.[11]
In May 1869 the principal members of the congregation of St Helen’s were invited to meet the vicar and churchwardens to consider how to finance the running costs and the repairs of the church following the abolition by parliament of compulsory church rates. The meeting endorsed a voluntary offertory and the end of payments for pews and, importantly, also set up a committee to appoint an eminent architect to plan the reseating of the church. Pott later described the church at this time as “in a miserable state of dilapidation” and saw the restoration as “a work of great cost and difficulty”. Henry Woodyer, who must have been Pott’s choice as architect, was asked to draw up plans.[12]
Four months later, a meeting of parishioners considered the detailed report and estimate prepared by Woodyear. The probable cost of the complete restoration of St Helen’s was £5232. Despite this daunting amount the meeting resolved to follow Woodyer’s proposals. A subscription list was opened but by May 1871 the subscriptions had reached only £3000 and a committee of subscribers met to consider the dilapidated state of the roof. The meeting appointed a sub-committee of current and former churchwardens and the Abingdon architect Edwin Dolby to report on a more limited plan to repair the roof and re-pew the church. The meeting noted that the vicar “had at heart a more complete restoration of the church” but there was a strong feeling in the parish that a less costly restoration would be quite satisfactory. Pott, however, eventually got his way, thanks to the funds provided by “dear Uncle William of Tyntesfield” and despite having himself suffered a very severe attack of scarlet fever and then having to spend time with Wilberforce, now bishop of Winchester, as one of his chaplains.[13]
Woodyer’s style of architecture with its emphasis on the chancel fitted Pott’s high church views. Their plans went far beyond the immediately necessary repairs and stabilisation of the structure. St Helen’s has an unusual layout for a church. Its site constrained it to growing by adding aisles and, from the sixteenth century, the chancel and nave had been flanked by two aisles on each side, all the full length of the church and with only small differences in the heights of the five pitched roofs. Woodyer transformed the chancel aisle by raising its roof to be significantly higher than the roofs of the other four aisles. He inserted a new east window, and embellished the chancel with new stalls and side screens and a new rood screen surmounted by a cross. The diocesan architect, George Edmund Street, took strong exception to the planned alterations to the chancel aisle and rejected Pott’s reason that “all distinction between the nave and the chancel had been obliterated” but, in the event, the only part of the plan he was able to get changed was a reduction in the length of some of the proposed new benches in the outer aisles of the church. These were outside the chancel aisle and so were financed through local funds and had been made long to minimise the cost per seat. The restoration took from 1869 to 1873 with the church completely closed for over two years, and it cost £7021 (perhaps £4-5 million today) of which Pott and his family paid the entire cost of the new chancel aisle. In a speech following the reopening Pott declared he could never have undertaken the restoration without the “eager and enthusiastic” support of the parishioners.[14]
Pott also had a great influenced on the life of the church and the grammar school. He reorganised church services and used the surplice for preaching, a high church practice. He was instrumental in replacing pew rents, church rates and the Easter offering by a voluntary offertory each week. He had the registers repaired and rebound, and he started up a parish magazine. The Abingdonian, the journal of Abingdon School, noted in its obituary on him that he was chairman of the governors from his appointment as vicar in 1869 until 1900 ̶ long after he had left Abingdon ̶ and that “his authority and influence did much to guide the policy of the SchooI.” The local historian James Townsend, writing some forty years later, comments that he won general respect through the changes he accomplished and “by his great business capacity, by his authority as a scholar, and by the tact and vigour of his character”.[15]
Pott resigned his Abingdon living in 1874 suffering again from one of his recurrent bouts of ill health and “thoroughly exhausted and broken down alike in mind and body”. In 1875 he moved to Clifton Hampden as vicar, following in the footsteps of his father-in-law who had served from 1830 until his death in 1864, and he and his wife moved into what had been her childhood home. It was an easier parish for Pott than his three earlier incumbencies. Clifton Hampden manor and estate were Gibbs family property, and the parish was already provided with a rebuilt church, a vicarage, and a school, allowing Pott to concentrate on his pastoral work and his responsibilities as archdeacon.
In 1873 Pott’s “dear friend Bishop Wilberforce” had been killed in a riding accident at the age of sixty‑eight. Pott described this as an “overwhelming blow”. Five years later, following the death of the Archdeacon of Oxford, Pott reflected on the effect of losing his patron and a chance of being appointed to the archdeaconry of Oxford, regarded as the more prestigious position: “There was great expectation I should succeed him [the archdeacon] at Christ Church. …. Bishop Mackarness [Wilberforce’s successor] elected Edwin Palmer. I was a little disappointed.”[16]
Early in 1879 the living at Brightwell became vacant and Pott was strongly urged by Mackarness to accept it. The church at Brightwell had recently been restored and a school had been built, but Edwin Dolby’s adaption and enlargement of an older house to create a new rectory would not be completed for another year. Pott reluctantly accepted, but within a few days of being instituted as rector “…came the great sorrow of our lives. Our dear eldest boy was killed by an accident… After our great sorrow I gave up Brightwell.”. Charles Percival Pott, an undergraduate at Oxford, had been driving with a friend in a dogcart from Oxford to Abingdon when the horse bolted at a sharp corner near Radley, throwing him to the ground, and he never regained consciousness. After resigning from Brightwell following his son’s death, Pott and his wife moved back to Clifton Hampden to live privately in the ‘vicarage extra house’ where they stayed for over two years.[17]
Pott had remained archdeacon of Berkshire and in 1881 was still living in Clifton Hampden but his bishop again pressed him to accept a living, this time at Sonning near Reading. He moved in 1882. The village had been provided in the 1850s with a restored and remodelled church, a school, and a much-remodelled vicarage, all to the designs of Henry Woodyer. The vicarage was evidently lacking some conveniences as Edwin Dolby had accepted a tender of £1331 from a builder for alterations and additions to the Vicarage House, Sonning, for Archdeacon Pott. But Pott was not happy about the move: “ I was now sixty and in very poor health. My dear wife still more feeble” yet, despite this, “we had many causes for happiness during our seventeen years continuance there.” Pott describes his chief work at Sonning as “the erection of a Parish Room”. This was done in 1888, financed partly by a bequest and a donation and partly by Pott himself. During the 1880s and 1890s both Pott and his wife often suffered from from ill health, and in 1886 they spent several months recuperating in Italy and Switzerland. Pott contemplated resigning from Sonning for many years, but only finally decided in 1899, explainng that an important reason for the delay was “the great diminution in income during the years when our children were educating or marrying”. Once retired as a parish priest, though still remaining archdeacon, he, his wife and three unmarried chidren moved to Windlesham in Surrey and Pott wrote the Memoirs which record his professional and family life but also give a glimps of his affection for family and friends. He always writes of his dear wife or dear children, and also writes about his long-lasting personal friendships. At the start of 1903, after three years in Windlesham, he resigned as archdeacon, just a few weeks before his wife died.[18]
The Reading Mercury, in reporting his retirement “full of years and honours”, regrets the loss of his wise judgenent and judicius advice, and talks of him as a faithful friend and valued counsellor of the clergy througout his active and useful life.[19]
Pott died at his home in Windleshamin in February 1908 and was buried in Clifton Hampden at a service attended by many family members and clergy. The Rev T Laing, headmasted of Abingdon School. spoke of Pott at a service in St Nicolas, Abingdon, as a scholar who also “posessed practical gifts of a very hign order, great powers of organisation, and a knowledge and control of men”, and commented on “the very large impress which he made upon this neighbourhood and the Diocese”.[20]
In his will, Pott left nearly £50, 000 (today of the order of £4 million) mostly to his children.[21]
Alfred Pott, despite the feeling of his own inadequacy that is a constant theme through his Memoirs, was judged very differently by his contemporaries. He was someone who got things done – not just buildings and administration but new ways of organising local church life – and he was much respected for what he accomplished, for his skills in taking people with him, and for his always wise advice.
© AAAHS and contributors 2023
References:
[1] We are most grateful to Sarah Wearne, archivist at Abingdon School, for providing us with a scan of the photocopy of Pott’s Memoirs of my life, 1822-1903 typescript which is held in the school archives. References are to the original page numbers. Another photocopy is held at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Nigel Hammond published extracts of the Memoirs in ‘The Missing Diaries of the Venerable Alfred Pott, BD (1822-1908), First Principal of Cuddesdon College and Archdeacon of Berkshire’, Oxoniensia, vol. 70 (2005), pp.71-8, available online at https://oxoniensia.org/oxo_volume.php?vol=70, accessed 12/2/23.
[2] Pott, Memoirs, pp. 10-11.
[3] Pott, Memoirs, pp.1&3 (he had 15 siblings only 7 of whom survived childhood) & pp.10-13; 1851 census return for the Foundling Hospital in London; GS Woods revised by Mark Champion, Article on Alfred Pott in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB, widely available online to holders of county library cards), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/35583 accessed 20/2/23; Arthur Burns, Article on Samuel Wilberforce, ODNB, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/29385, accessed 27/2/23; Jennifer Sherwood and Nikolaus Pevsner Buildings of England [BoE] Oxfordshire, 1974, pp. 549-50.
[4] Woods & Champion, Alfred Pott, ODNB; L C B Seaman, Victorian England, Methuen 1973, pp. 4-24; Kenneth Clark, The Gothic Revival, 3rd edition, John Murray 1962, pp. 150-174; Pott, Memoirs pp.12-15 & pp.18-21.
[5] Pott, Memoirs, pp. 22-3; Hammond, Pott memoir, Oxoniensia vol.70, p. 73.
[6] Matthew Kilburn, Article on William Gibbs, ODNB, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/89656; Martin Daunton, Article on Henry Hucks Gibbs, 1st Baron Aldenham, ODNB, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/33386; Mary Loubel (ed.) Victoria County History (VCH) of Oxfordshire, vol.7, (1962), pp.16-27, available online at https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/oxon/vol7/pp16-27 accessed 2/3/23; Jennifer Sherwood and Nikolaus BoE Oxfordshire, 1974, pp. 549-50 & 936.
[7] John Elliott & John Prichard (eds.), Henry Woodyer, Gentleman Architect, University of Reading, 2002, pp. 13, 131 & 140.
[8] Geoffrey Tyack, Simon Bradley and Nikolaus Pevsner Buildings of England [BoE] Berkshire, revised 2010, p. 284; Pott Memoirs, pp. 23-4, Hammond, Pott memoir, Oxoniensia vol. 70, p. 73.
[9] Pott Memoirs, p, 32, Hammond, Pott memoir, Oxoniensia vol. 70, p. 74.
[10] Jacky Smith, ‘Housing Development’, Celebrating 150 Years of Albert Park, Abingdon-on-Thames, privately published Abingdon 2015, pp. 53-62; Pott Memoirs, pp. 31-2; Hammond, Pott memoir, Oxoniensia vol. 70, pp. 74-5; Reading Mercury 1 June 1867 p. 6.
[11] Pott Memoirs, p. 36; Hammond, Pott memoir, Oxoniensia vol. 70, pp. 74-5; Oxford Journal 2 October 1869 p.6; Building News 8 October 1869 p.18.
[12] Reading Mercury, 8 May 1869 p. 6; Pott Memoirs, pp. 32-3; Hammond, Pott memoir, Oxoniensia vol. 70, p. 75.
[13] Reading Mercury, 25 September 1869 p. 6; Berkshire Chronicle, 6 May 1871 p. 8; Pott Memoirs, pp. 34 – 6; Hammond, Pott memoir, Oxoniensia vol. 70, p. 75.
[14] Elliott & Prichard (eds.), Henry Woodyer, pp. 55-72; Tyack, Bradley and Pevsner BoE Berkshire, pp. 94-7; Bodleian library, Ms. Top. Berks c. 14, Pott letters of 9 April 1870 & 20 October 1871 and Street letter of 16 April 1870; Pott Memoirs p. 36; Hammond, Pott memoir, Oxoniensia vol. 70, p. 75; https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter/ accessed 8/4/23 was used for the cost conversion; Reading Mercury 2 August 1873 p. 6.
[15] James Townsend, A history of Abingdon, (London, 1910), pp.79-80; The Abingdonian, No.9. Vol. IV. April 1908, accessible online at https://www.abingdon.org.uk/abingdonian-archive/.
[16] Pott Memoirs p. 41; Hammond, Pott memoir, Oxoniensia vol.70, p. 76.
[17] Geoffrey Tyack, Simon Bradley and Nikolaus Pevsner, BoE Berkshire, revised 2010, p. 210; Pott Memoirs p. 42; Hammond, Pott memoir, Oxoniensia vol.70, p. 76; Oxford Journal 17 May 1879 p.6; 1881 census.
[18] 1881 census; Tyack, Bradley & Pevsner, BoE Berkshire, revised 2010, pp. 519-22; Bicester Herald 1 December 1882 p.8. 1901 census; Pott Memoirs p. 46-51 & 54-61; Hammond, Pott memoir, Oxoniensia vol.70, p. 77.
[19]Reading Mercury 10 January 1903, p. 7.
[20] Oxford Journal 7 March 1908 p.8; Berkshire Chronicle 4 March 1908 p.5; Faringdon Advertiser and Vale of the White Horse Gazette 14 March 1908 p.5; Arthur E Preston, St Nicholas Abingdon and Other Papers (republished S R Publishers Limited, 1971) Opposite p. 380.
[21]Woods & Champion Alfred Pott, ODNB; Surrey Mirror Tuesday 24 March 1908 p.2; Berks and Oxon Advertiser 27 March 1908 p.8; https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter/ accessed 8/4/23 was used for the cost conversion.
