The Strange Tale of Rev. James Spurrell

Our two villages - of Great and Little Shelford - couldn't be more different. Great Shelford is a sprawling village, with the houses of Cambridge edging ever closer, and a population (as of 2021) of 4,537. Little Shelford, on the other hand, lives up to its name. It's much more compact, surrounded by fields (albeit now very close to the M11 motorway), and with a population of just 779. And there's a reason for this disparity...

Great Shelford land was mostly owned by three Cambridge colleges (see Great Shelford's Three Manors). The colleges showed little interest in village affairs and so the running of the village was in the hands of a group of wealthy farmers and corn merchants. Little Shelford, on the other hand, had a resident gentry family - the Wales, who lived at Shelford Hall. It is a commonplace in history - and proves to be true on the ground - that where a gentry family exercised sway over a village, then they would restrict the inflow of poor and needy settlers who might become troublesome and a burden on the parish. And so, whereas Great Shelford filled up with labouring families and grew and grew, Little Shelford's growth was much more restricted.

The Wale fortune came from the Baltic trade as well as from their land. The family business was established in the 17th century, and pursued by successive generations of the family. It was based at Riga (part of Latvia), an important trading port for resources like timber, furs and grain, all of much importance to 18th and 19th century England.

It's in the 1850s that our focus comes to rest on the Wales. In the early 19th century the Hall had been the residence of General Sir Charles Wale. Sir Charles married three times, and fathered 16 children (many of whom died in infancy). Augusta Wale, who is one of the protagonists in our story, was the product of his third marriage, born when he was in his late fifties. By the time of which we speak, her older brother Robert Gregory Wale was in possession of the Hall, and various younger members of the family were living there.

Now let's turn to the Rev. Spurrell. James Spurrell was 33 when he came to Shelford, together with his wife Helen, as the new vicar. This was in 1849. The Spurrells were a Norfolk gentry family, and the sons of the family had gone into brewing. The family was a wealthy one, and, in 1841, James was living at a prestigious address in Hanover Square in Mayfair. He initially followed in his father's footsteps to become a brewer. However, he soon turned his back on the brewing life and entered Cambridge University to train for the priesthood - quite a career change! And so, in due course, he arived in Shelford, his first cure. 

The vicarage house in Shelford was the responsibility of Jesus College. There is frequent mention over the 18th and early 19th centuries of its poor state. Spurrell obviously took one look at it and decided it wasn't for a man who'd previously lived in Hanover Square. He demolished the old vicarage, and undertook the building of a new one - at his own expense, "in the very best taste" (as the Cambridge Chronicle informed its readers). Looking at the Old Vicarage - pictured below, with its "Tudor" chimneypots and other pseudo-historic features we might choose to differ. It was certainly very big - and opulent - especially for a two-person household: the couple had no children, though they did have three live-in servants.

And so Spurrell began his ministry. We don't hear much about him, but no doubt he went about the business of conducting baptisms, marriages and burials, took an active part in teaching the children of Shelford School their catechism, led meetings of the Bible Society and otherwise discharged his duties. We know (from the 1851 Religious Census) that his Sunday morning service attracted 125 people, the afternoon service 260 (many of them probably the same people as attended in the morning), that there were a further 77 "Sunday scholars" in the morning, 71 in the afternoon, and that he led a Wednesday evening service. And we know that his great rivals, at the Baptist Church (now the Free Church) were attracting similar numbers. 

Socially, he would have fitted in well. He came from a gentry family, had been educated at the University, and would have socialized in the best circles hereabouts, including the Wales of Little Shelford. So far, so good. And then it all started to go wrong...

To understand what happened you have to understand two things. First the way in which England's identity was intimately bound up with its Protestantism, and secondly the religious context of the early 1850s. When Henry VIII broke away from the Church of Rome, it was primarily a political move. Henry was desperate to ensure the future of the Tudor dynasty, and to do so he needed a son. The Pope refused to grant him a divorce from his apparently barren wife, and so permit him to marry a new wife. The king, therefore, cut the Gordian knot by declaring that, henceforward, the Pope had no authority over England, and that he himself was now the head of the new Church of England. This secession also allowed him to raid the Catholic church's enormous wealth in England. Henry himself may not have been strongly in favour of Protestant reform, but there were many round him who lobbied for a strongly Protestant England, and over the following 130 or so years, there was much conflict as the particular temper of English Protestantism. The Pope was anathematized as the Antichrist, and Roman Catholicism was considered both a political and a doctrinal threat. The rabid English reaction towards Roman Catholicism was stoked by a succession of political threats ranging from the Spanish Armada, to Guy Fawkes' Gunpowder Plot, to the Jacobite invasions. In doctrinal terms, Catholic practices such as burning incense, taking confession, praying to saints were viewed as so many signs of Catholic depravity. And, in the wake of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, religious orders - monasteries and nunneries - were outlawed. 

Over the 18th century, religious fervour diminished, and the Church of England lapsed into a dull conformity. Nevertheless, state and religion were one. Clergymen tended to come from the gentlemanly class, and were often less than devout. Many could hardly be bothered to hold their services. Religious attendance began to fall, and nonconformist churches began a corresponding rise.

However, the 1840s saw a new burst of energy within the Church of England. Although we had stopped executing Roman Catholics after the 1680s, legislation - the Test Acts - was still in place which debarred Catholics from public office and from attending Oxbridge (which were at the time Anglican institutions). The Test Acts were repealed in 1828/9. This sparked a new movement, the Oxford Movement, and soon its exponents were declaring that the Anglican church should reclaim more Catholic thought and practice, soon called Anglo-Catholicism. They wanted more Catholic ritual (what the old Protestant reformers called "bells and smells"), Anglican monastic communities, and clergy who were more engaged with their duties and their flocks. This wasn't to everyone's taste, of course.  Cambridge, for example, was the seat of a Low Church group, led by Charles Simeon at King’s, and focussed round Holy Trinity church. Simeon was an Evangelical, and an inspired preacher. He mentored many young aspiring priests and trained some as missionaries. He founded the Church Missionary Society (to which, decades later, Spurrell would leave a handsome bequest). Spurrell was almost certainly one of his followers. 

Spurrell was clearly one of the old-school Protestants, and wanted no truck with this revival of Popish practices. He plunged straight into the Anglo-Catholic controversy, and the impetus for this was provided by Augusta Wale.

In 1851 the 27-year-old Augusta Wale was living in Plymouth, at the Wyndham Place Orphans Home. But how had she come there? Augusta, as a female member of a gentry family, didn't have too many life options. The list of things she couldn't do was formidable - most obviously this included any sort of career - and the expectations upon her were equally formidable. She had to be genteel, accomplished, decorous and decorative. She would be expected to make a "good" marriage, one with someone of the same, or better, rank than her family, and preferably one that brought good contacts, if not downright financial advantage. At 27 the family might well have expected to have married her off already. If she didn't marry, she'd become a spinster, reluctantly taken in by one of her siblings. But clearly marriage wasn't her primary ambition, and at one point she was thinking of joining a Catholic convent. Her family were unhappy with this, and a compromise solution was arrived at whereby she went to Plymouth to join an Anglican religious order there, the Sisters of Mercy of the Holy Trinity of Devonport. The order had been set up by Lydia Sellon. 

Lydia's father was a naval man, her grandfather an important figure at St Paul's Cathedral. Plymouth was a place of appalling poverty, and Lydia had answered a call by the Archbishop of Exeter for help in educating poor children there. She saw this as her life's work, and set about this and much other good work there, aimed at the relief of poverty and need, with great enthusiasm. She was soon joined by other ladies, and so the Sisters were formed. The Sisters did enormous good in the city, even ministering to the sick during a cholera epidemic. However, the mere notion of a sisterhood, so redolent of Catholicism, evoked anti-Catholic prejudice, and soon detractors began attacking the order. They accused the sisterhood of all manner of Popish practices. A torrent of pamphlets followed, both for and against her.

Augusta Wale had obviously joined the Sisters on an idealistic impulse, and her family certainly thought it a suitable place for a lady. The reality did not agree with her, and by 1852 she was back home. This was where Spurrell heard her story, heard about the order and took against it. He felt moved to join the controversy, and published a pamphlet, 

Miss Sellon and the Sisters of Mercy

An Exposure of the Constitution, Rules, Religious Views and practical working of their society".

It ran to 41 pages. He pilloried Lydia Sellon. He accused her of converting the young ladies into "little better than slaves. "For where could you get a servant-of-all-work to do the work which these young ladies have had laid upon them". It was completely inappropriate, in his mind, for such genteel women to be required to do such menial work. He was even more severely exercised by the sisterhood's Catholic practices - the cross on the Communion table, the saying of the Hours, their rosaries, and the practice of confession. He even quoted a penance enacted on Miss Wale, of "making the sign of the cross with the tongue on the floor of the Oratory!!". It's so outré one wonders if it was actually true. The sisterhood was, in his mind, a "semi-Romish society" and should be suppressed. He quoted letters from Miss Sellon to Miss Wale's mother, suggesting that Miss Sellon was exercising undue control of the sisters. It is hard for us at this distance to judge what truth there was in his accusations. What is clear is that Miss Wale was not happy there. 

Either way, it was a most intemperate pamphlet, and it fuelled the fire of controversy. The attacks on Miss Sellon descended into tabloid frenzy, and Spurrell himself gained considerable notoriety.

The controversy would take a heavy toll on Miss Sellon. Her work during the cholera epidemic had already weakened her. She became confined to a wheelchair for the last 15 years of her life, died in 1876. Spurrell, meanwhile, had hardly presented in a good light - bigoted, vicious, narrow-minded, barely acknowledging the true Christian spirit in which the Sisters had worked, and thereby wholly devoid of Christian charity.

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  Suddenly, at the end of 1852 Spurrell resigned his living, and the Spurrells left Shelford. The Cambridge Chronicle reported thus:

"We have stated in former numbers that the Rev. James Spurrell some time ago resigned the living at Gt Shelford, after having held it for 3 years. A correspondent says:- He has built a good parsonage and spent on the living more than £2000. He was indefatigable in his duties and unabounded in his charities. We may add the Bishop of Ely expresses great regret at his leaving his diocese". CC, 4 Dec 1852

What had happened? His sudden departure feels extraordinary. Is it possible that he had upset the Wales by exposing their daughter in this sensationalist manner? Did the Bishop feel he had overstepped the mark? Did he no longer feel able to continue in his parish duties? In other words - did he jump, or was he pushed? We simply don't know. It's certainly very strange that, having invested so much money on his vicarage, and spent so little time in Shelford, that he should decide of his own accord to up sticks and leave. But, whatever the reason, he and his wife left the village.

When the Spurrells left Shelford, they sold everything. It was too difficult to take all your furnishings with you when you moved. The auction sale lays bare the style in which the couple had lived. It advertises "the costly and fashionable furniture and effects (supplied new within the last two years, in the most elegant style, regardless of expence...)". The dining room was furnished with Spanish mahogany furniture and a Brussels carpet, eight "handsomely-carved chairs, in crimson Moroccan leather", a massive lounge couch and so on. In the drawing-room, rosewood furniture, a noble gilt chimney glass, a "superfine tapestry carpet", and "chaste" ornaments (no naked Classical women  here - he was a vicar!). There were two noble four-post bedsteads, hair and wool mattresses, Witney blankets, Marseilles quilts, washstands, bidets and bedsteps. There was also a fashionable Brougham carriage (the Vicarage has a coach-house) and the horse that pulled it. All in all, a luxurious household. Not much Christian poverty here. 

They went to live in Hove. Thereafter James was described as a clergyman without cure of souls. The couple continued to live in some state, with a butler, cook, lady's maid, housemaid and kitchenmaid. You can find the odd mention of James, once preaching a sermon, contributing to a National School fundraiser and so on. Helen Spurrell hasn't attracted much mention so far. We don't know what her thoughts and feelings were about the storm that enveloped her household, but she was, it seems, a formidable intellect. Apparently also a talented artist and sculptor. Aged over 50, she learnt Hebrew. You'll find it said, in various internet sources, that she was educated at Balliol College. I'm not sure how this can be true. Women were first admitted to Oxford in 1879, and then only to women's colleges. Could her education have been some private arrangement? - the statement needs some careful investigation. But what is true is that she translated the Old Testament from a Hebrew text, and her translation is highly praised. By any standards that was a formidable achievement. So one thing we can say for certain about the Spurrells is that they were a genuinely devout couple. They both lived to a ripe old age, dying within a year of each other. James's will - disposing of an estate of roughly £600,000 (a fortune in those days) - contained a long list of bequests, notably to the Sussex County Hospital and to the Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East.

As to Augusta Wale, she did in the end what she was expected to do. She married. Her husband was a physician (or doctor), and the son of a clergyman. She bore him six children. She was 32 when she married, perhaps a little late by the standards of her time. By some irony, the couple settled in Brighton, not so far from Rev. Spurrell. I wonder did they meet in their respective new lives?

v1 © Helen Harwood, uploaded November 2025