FAMILY OF C. G. HALL

Non Nascor Mihi Solum

Cecil Gallopine Hall - 13 May 1868 - 29 October 1939

 

C.G.Hall was the seventh child of Thomas Owen Hall. Cecil won an organ scholarship to Rossall School, and went on to win an organ scholarship at Trinity College Oxford. He received a 1st in his prelims and a 2nd in his finals. Through his university years he discovered a marvelous skill for teaching and also became an excellent bible scholar. With this he decided to be ordained. Her served his first curacy under his eldest brother. This caused a certain amount of friction and was not good.

His first parish was Cramlington, a large pit village in Northumberland. He loved and cared for the Northumberland miners, but had to move on due to inadequate accommodation for his newly married wife Constance Gertrude Upcher and growing family.


He went to a new parish at St Matthew's Newcastle, starting there in 1905. It was big city parish, not wealthy with an ordinary working class congregation. He had two curates and two sisters as his assistants. During his service at St Matthews he set up a school for the blind and also a school for the deaf and dumb. He was a moderately High Churchman and always used vestments and incense. In 1914 before the war, Cecil was assisted by only one curate, and he became sick and terribly overworked.


He left Newcastle and went to a new parish at Scotton in Lincolnshire in 1925. He took over from a man who had had to claim the sick pension which was set aside for parish priests that they could claim a third of the income of the parish. The system was so inadequate that only about one in three priest could actually claim it. It was this time in Scotton where Cecil was earning most in his life. £700 a year. His income from 1905-25 had been continuously £300. So this made them comparatively rich. Cecil suffered a nervous breakdown in 1929 and so was forced to give up. If he had been able to take a service or even to get someone in to take the services, he could stayed to the end. But because of his mental state, not even this was possible. So he was forced to retire with no pension. He moved to Lincoln where he took the Sunday duties, working for £1 a week.


After Constance's death in 1936 he could no longer cope alone. Faith, his youngest and only daughter, lived with him for a year, until Giles, his 2nd son, and his wife returned from China. They nursed him near Penzance for a year until his death on 29 October 1939.


He had led a happy but not very spectacular life with an uneasy marriage. There had always been a certain amount of irritability and tension, but he loved Constance very much, and when either of them was away, they wrote daily. He was very proud of his seven children.
Due to the fact that he himself had not been fully recognised as he ought to have been, he was exceptionally pleased when Ronald became a bishop, and preached the sermon at Ronald's consecration. According to Faith, his favourite son was Noel; they had very similar minds, and both appreciated economics and the same politics. C.G was a very academic man, and although he was never wealthy, set up a great education and stimulation for his seven descendants. His maxim about children was: "Have 'em, love 'em, and leave 'em be!"

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