Stratford sub Castle Village Website
Salisbury, Wiltshire UK
Edward Caswall
The Revd Edward Caswall (1814–78), was Perpetual Curate of St Lawrence Church Stratford sub Castle from 1840 until his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1847. [1]
He composed many hymns, including the well-known carol 'See Amid the Winter's Snow'.
See, amid the winter's snow,
Born for us on Earth below,
See, the tender Lamb appears,
Promised from eternal years.
Chorus:
Hail, thou ever blessed morn,
Hail redemption's happy dawn,
Sing through all Jerusalem,
Christ is born in Bethlehem.
Lo, within a manger lies
He who built the starry skies;
He who, throned in height sublime,
Sits among the cherubim.
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St Lawrence Church on 1 March 2018
Image: Christine Pullen
Click the play button to hear the carol
Mawarden Court was the Stratford Vicarage from 1849 to 1947 [1].
Image:
Notice of an Auction at Mahwarden (sic) House [2]
'The whole of the Modern & Genteel HOUSEHOLD FURNITURE, and other effects, of the Rev Edward Caswall.'
Sources
[1] 'Stratford-sub-Castle', in A History of the County of Wiltshire: Volume 6, ed. Elizabeth Crittall (London, 1962), pp. 199-213. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/wilts/vol6/pp199-213 [accessed 12 December 2020].
[2] Notice of Auction of Household Furniture etc from the Salisbury and Winchester Journal Saturday, April 4, 1846 reproduced within the terms of the British Newspaper Archive. Image ©The British Library Board, all rights reserved.
Other articles on this website about Mawarden Court:
Living at Mawarden Court in the 1920's and 1930's
This article supplies the answer to Question No. 36 in the website's
Local History Photo Quiz.
Mawarden Court takes its name from Richard de Mawardyn.
Details in an article held on the Local History Group's external storage drive
The article below about Edward Caswall written by David James, originally appeared in The Friends of St Lawrence Newsletter no.39 published in Spring 2023 and has been re-produced here with the kind permission of the Trustees of St Lawrence Church.
Recent work assembling a list of former St Lawrence Church Priests reveals the fact that one of them, Edward Caswall, was the well-known 19thC hymn writer. A fascinating book by Nancy Marie de Flon (Reference) about him provides many interesting facts about his life and his time here in Stratford sub Castle.
Edward Caswall Well-Known Hymn Writer and One-time St Lawrence Church Priest
Edward Caswall (1814-1878) was one of the 19th century’s most important hymn writers. He was born in Yateley in Hampshire where his father was then Vicar of St Peter’s Church. A number of his relations were clergy in the Church of England including his brother and Grandfather. A Great Uncle, Thomas Burgess on his mother’s side, had been the Bishop of St David’s in Wales from 1803 to 1825 and then became Bishop of Salisbury Diocese from 1825 until 1837.
Fig 1
Caswall (Fig 1) went to Chigwell Grammar School followed by Marlborough College in Wiltshire and then on to Oxford University. After graduating he chose to enter the Anglian Ministry and was ordained a priest in 1839. He was licensed as the Perpetual Curate of St Lawrence Church by the Dean of Salisbury Cathedral on the 7th November 1840.
The living of Stratford sub Castle was under the patronage of the Dean and Chapter of Salisbury Cathedral and its value was £80/year (equivalent to approximately £8,000 today).
Also as Perpetual Curate Caswall occupied the imposing residence of Mawarden Court just across the road from the Church and shown in the drawing in Fig 2, made by J Fisher in 1832, to be a much larger house than it is today. Having arrived in Stratford single, only a year later, in December 1841, Caswall married Louisa Walker from Somerset, the daughter of a Major-General. On joining him at Mawarden Court she appears to have quickly set up a very welcoming home.
Fig 2
Details of his time as Priest at St Lawrence were recorded by Caswall. Apparently the average attendance at his 11am Sunday morning services was 100 parishioners of which around 14 were children. At the 3pm services the attendance was between 35 and 50 people including children. During his time at St Lawrence he performed 29 baptisms, 41 funerals and 10 weddings. It is clear from the evidence in de Flon’s book that he was very popular with the Parishioners and did much to help the local poor, both financially and educationally.
Apparently Caswall had spent most of his life wrestling with his beliefs, so much so, that in 1846 he decided to make the momentous decision to leave the Church of England and become a Roman Catholic Priest. Resigning in March 1846 after nearly 5½years at Stratford, he moved to Birmingham to join the Catholic Oratory run by John Newman.
Sadly, when Caswall left Stratford in 1846 all their furniture and carpets in the house had to be sold by auction. They had barely left Stratford when Louisa was struck down with Cholera in the terrible epidemic of 1849, leaving Caswell a widower at the age of 35 and with no children.
He spent over 30 years in the Catholic Church before his death at the early age of 64 in 1878.
During his lifetime he became one of the 19th century’s most prolific writers of hymns and poems. One of his particularly popular hymns is the Carol “See Amid the Winter Snow”. This was visually captured in a watercolour painting done around 1900 by Walter Bothams which shows St Lawrence Church Tower in the snow. It was featured on a Christmas card, produced by Salisbury Museum in 2003, (see Fig 3), which was also sold by the FoSL in aid of our funds.
David James
Reference: 2005, “Edward Caswall: Newman's Brother and Friend” by Nancy Marie de Flon
The Friends of St Lawrence Church is a Registered Charity no. 1063271. Details here.