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.
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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