Reverend William Mainprice

Reverend Mainprice was vicar of Wisborough Green for 22 years between 1896 and 1919.

Rev. Mainprice

William Mainprice was born on 5th December 1850 in Great Yarmouth, the son of John, a farmer and Susannah his wife.  For some reason William was not baptised until he was 17 years of age, perhaps when he had found his calling.

William attended St. Catherine’s College, Cambridge between 1869 and 1873 when he graduated B.A. with honours in classics and mathematics.   He was ordained deacon at Norwich in 1875 and then held curacies in Norfolk and Huntingdonshire until 1878 when he became headmaster of Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School in Boxford, Suffolk, a position he held until 1880.  He was chosen by the governors for the post out of 107 candidates.  Subsequently he occupied positions in parishes in Norfolk, Hertfordshire, Stepney and Fulham until coming to Wisborough Green.

William married Catherine Aldous in Norwich in 1875 and their first child Ida Catherine was born the following year.  There were

William and Catherine Mainprice and their children Lillian, William, Marjorie and Paul

five more children, the eldest boys being burdened somewhat by cumbersome forenames. Ernest William Loxley Mainprice was born in 1877; William Horace Briscoe Mainprice in 1879; Lillian Mary in 1880; Marjory Kate in 1892 and Bernard Paul in 1895.

Loxley Mainprice decided to pursue a career in the Royal Navy, enlisting in 1895 when he was 17.  His brother Paul, who was born only a couple of months before Loxley enlisted, followed him into the Navy in 1912.  Both joined the Paymaster’s branch.

Paul Mainprice gained the unwanted distinction of becoming the first of Wisborough Green’s war dead when his ship, H.M.S. Bulwark, blew up off Sheerness on 26th November 1914.  Loxley would also be killed, at the Battle of Jutland, on 31st May 1916.  A brass plaque in the chancel of St. Peter’s commemorates the brothers.

Only the younger William followed his father into the ministry.  He was curate in Petworth when he married Constance Andrews in Salehurst, Kent in June 1914 and in 1916 he was appointed vicar of Loxwood.  Father and son were in attendance together that year at a confirmation service in Billingshurst presided over by the Bishop of Chichester.  70 candidates from the three parishes were presented.  It was the younger Mainprice who held the pastoral staff behind the Bishop throughout the service.

In 1919 Rev. Mainprice retired and moved to Bromley with Catherine.  His flock at Wisborough gave him and his wife a purse containing £75.  Following his death in 1925, the congregation at Wisborough Green subscribed for a brass plaque to commemorate him which was placed in the chancel above that to his sons.  Catherine followed William the following year.  In 1933 their eldest daughter, Ida, died suddenly at the family home.  The Sacristan of Westminster Abbey officiated at her funeral, along with Archdeacon Leacock late of Victoria, British Columbia who represented the Bishop of Columbia.  Ida had spent time in Canada where she was secretary for the Columbia Diocese.

After 19 years at Loxwood, the younger William became rector of Dallington in East Sussex in December 1934 but resigned due to ill-health after just two years.  He hoped to take charge of another parish but he died in 1938 at a Sanatorium in Kingswood, Surrey.  His funeral took place in Loxwood where he was interred.

Marjorie travelled to Canada where she married (the only one of the three sisters to do so) and stayed.  She had three children and named her first born John Loxley.  She died in 1954.

Lillian moved to Bromley with her parents but returned to Wisborough Green before the Second World War.  The 1939 Register shows her at Eardenstowe school, Edmund Lloyd Maunsell’s establishment, where her occupation is described as ‘domestic duties.’   In 1947, when Maunsell opened Hawkhurst Court as his new school Lillian stayed on the staff and it was still her residence when she died age 84 in the Downs Branch, Epsom, of the Royal Marsden Hospital in October 1965.  She had clearly been prudent because her estate was valued at a little over £11,000.  She was buried in St. Peter’s churchyard on 6th October 1965.

The vicar occupied a position of importance in the daily affairs of a parish, and Rev. Mainprice was no exception.  He could be found chairing meetings and giving talks on a variety of subjects during the week, as well as ministering from the pulpit on Sundays.  He had a prominent role to play in the life of the local school, from a management point of view and as a teacher of the scriptures to the children.  Gilbert Miles, a pupil from 1911 to 1916 may have thought the vicar to be ‘very elderly’(he was in his mid-60s at the time) and ‘tended to wander in his speech’ but Rev. Mainprice was clearly held in high regard by his parishioners given the generosity of his retirement gift and the brass plate erected in the church in his memory.

This is an edited version of an article that first appeared in the April 2025 edition of the Wisborough Green Historian, the monthly magazine of the Wisborough Green Village History Society, which is free to members.

Andrew Strudwick