Hasketon: various notes collected by the late Rev. Frederick W. Wait

[gobbitt]

Frederick William Wait was Rector of Hasketon for twenty years until his death at the age of 69 in 1927. His parish history, focusing largely on the church, was published posthumously with an additional preface (page 5) dated 1928 by his widow, Charlotte Augusta née Wells (1864-1941).

Fairly accurate optical character recognition in the attached file compensates to some extent for the omission of several villagers from the index (page 23), notably the author's own sons, whose memorial tablet is mentioned on page 12, and other Hasketon servicemen lost in the Great War (listed on page 21) who are now admirably commemorated by Peter Hughes at The Sheeprug Pages.

Also noted on page 12 are wall tablets for William GOODWIN (d. 1663) and his two sons, for the FREELAND family and for William FARRER (d. 1635 aged 15), the son of a rector, who is recorded again among the floor stones on page 16: William FARRER (1637) and his son William (1635); William GOODWIN ("1634" [1663/4]) and his wife Margaret [Margery?] (1694); Nathaniel ATHEROLD (1653) and his wife Martha (1678) and daughters Sarah (1666) and Mary (1685); salt officer John LINTON (1737) and Mary his wife (1736).

[Fuller details of many Hasketon memorials were supplied by H. W. Birch's "Some Suffolk Church Notes" (no LXXVII) in the July 1910 issue of The East Anglian; or, Notes and Queries (volume 13, pages 295-297, available from the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/sim_east-anglian-or-notes-and-queries_1910-07_13/page/295/).]

The few gravestone inscriptions copied on page 18 were apparently selected for the virtues extolled in their verses. Only two men are named: Thomas STANNARD (d. 1817 aged 67) and Edward CAPON (d. 1808 aged 72).

The site of an 18th-century Baptist chapel, where farmer Thomas SALKELD and his family were buried, is identified on page 17.

Rectors of Hasketon from 1317 to 1927 are listed on pages 14 and 15. One of them, from 1756 to 1762, was Harry MANDER, who repeated the prayers and sermons from memory, being blind.

I bought this booklet from a dealer in  2020. It was previously owned by Florence Marion Louise Whisstock (1891-1984), whose signature is on the title page, and David Sargeant (c.1941-2018?), whose bookplate is pasted inside a new hard cover.

David Gobbitt

[gobbitt]

I recently chanced upon the Reverend F. W. Wait's portrait in Norfolk and Suffolk in East Anglia: Contemporary Biographies, published in 1911 by W. T. Pike, who also included it the following year on page 269 of East Anglia in the Twentieth Century: Contemporary Biographies (Internet Archive) with the same text:

Wait.—REV. FREDERICK WILLIAM WAIT, M.A., Hasketon Rectory, Woodbridge, Suffolk; son of the late George J. Wait, of Trelawney, Earley, Berks, and Emily Jane, second daughter of the late Dr. Phillip Vincent, of Camborne, and widow of Captain Joseph Vivian, East India Service, of Roseworthy, Cornwall; born at Gloucester, April 29th, 1858; educated at Reading School; late Foundation Scholar of Emmanuel College, Cambridge; 1st Senior Optime, 1881; Ely Theological College, 1885; B.A., 1881; M.A., 1884. Ordained Deacon, 1886, and Priest, 1887, by the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol; Rector of Hasketon since 1907; formerly Master at Friars School, Bangor, 1882-85; Curate of St. Mary’s, Wotton-under-Edge, 1886-90; St. Michael's and All Angels, Croydon, 1890-92; St. Thomas, Stamford Hill, 1892-99; St. Augustine's, Victoria Park, South Hackney, 1899-1905; St. Barnabas, Kensington, 1906-07. Married, in 1894, Charlotte Augusta, daughter of the late John Wells, J.P., of Boothferry, Goole, Yorks.