GRAVE SPOTTING…..again!!!
Pauline Berry

Whilst doing a stint of grave-spotting in St. James' churchyard recently, I found one particular grave which I had read about and long wanted to find. It was the resting place of the grandparents of Richard St.Barbe Baker, O.B.E. It was not difficult to spot, to the right of the main pathway from Church Hill and the A27, a long low stone with wrought-iron neatly enclosing its perimeter.
  Although some of the verse is hard to decipher now, the words "Rev. J.T.W. Baker, MA., died 1874 aged 62" and "his wife Harriet Martha Maria Baker, died 1882 aged 57" were visible enough. This encouraged me to check the facts about these gentlefolk in my own books written by their famous grandson Richard St.Barbe Baker, founder of "Men of the Trees", now the "International Tree Foundation".
Richard's grandfather, John Thomas Wright Baker was a parson, like his great-grandfather (Rector of Botley), "passing rich on £140 a year". This gentleman, we are told, had charge of the Parishes of Botley, Durley, Sholing and West End where he lived in his own house with a large garden, surrounded by trees. It may well have been "Laurel House", where the Police Station used to stand, opposite the Old Burial Ground, according to the 1881 Census.
The Reverend John T.W.Baker was an "eloquent speaker" with a reputation for dramatising his readings of the Scriptures and bringing them to life for his enrapt congregation! He had attended Clare College, Cambridge, in his youth, was a staunch vegetarian and an athlete who had once walked 40 miles before breakfast for a wager. A keen walker in later life, he walked from one parish to another, unless it was raining when he was driven in a 'brougham', a one-horse carriage. When he did walk, however, he was well-known for filling his pockets with acorns and pushing them into holes by the wayside made by the ferrule of his walking stick. I wonder how many of those Victorian seedlings grew and still survive today as sturdy oaks?
It was his radical evangelical ideas on religion which fell foul of his Bishop who sent him such a stern, reproving letter that the parson became so upset that he had a sudden stroke or heart attack and died in 1874. His only son, John Richard St.Barbe Baker (father of Richard) was only fourteen years of age when his father died and took on the care of his mother, Harriet, until her eventual death in 1882. He moved into the newly built "The Firs" in Beacon Road soon after with his new wife Charlotte. There he brought up his

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WEST END ABOUT 100 YEARS AGO….

Well? Do you recognise the cottage? It is one of the very few thatched cottages still standing in our village. Somewhat changed and slightly modified today it stands at the bottom of Chalk Hill and still retains its thatch! There is another partly thatched cottage which was called "Araucaria" next to the "Lamp and Mantle" pub but the hedge and fence tend to hide it.          Ed.