Rev. Henry Turner and a visit to Nottingham
Posted
11th October 2024
in blog, blogsNnews, Collection
I recently went to Nottingham for a couple of days with a friend who lives in the opposite side of the country. We like to meet up annually, sometimes choosing places we don’t know, where we hope to find interesting things to do and see. It is getting harder to find new places we can both reach easily after 50 years of friendship.
This year I chose Nottingham. I’d never been before and really wanted to visit the Castle and its galleries. Also niggling at the back of my mind was a link with Elizabeth Gaskell’s House which I thought I might follow up if time allowed.
We have an ongoing book repair programme at The House, each year choosing a few books from our collection which deserve care and attention and finding funding to get them restored. In 2023, the book which became my favourite of the nine we chose was a rather obscure brown book with the title The Sermons of Henry Turner.
This is a volume of sermons collected from the papers of the late Rev Henry Turner (1792 -1822) who died of pneumonia at the age of just 30. He was Minister at the Nottingham High Pavement Unitarian Chapel for just 5 years, 1817-1822.
There are 22 sermons in the volume including the last sermon he ever wrote , a sermon given on New Year’s Day 1822, just a few weeks before he died, in which he poignantly discourses on looking forward to old age. There is also the address given at his funeral and one or two other eulogies, including a touching letter written to Henry’s father William by John Collyer which says ‘the death of our beloved minister will be ever regretted by us, and his numerous virtues, his great usefulness and his friendly dispositions towards us have inspired in our hearts a sincere affection and gratitude which will, we trust, never be erased from our memory as long as we live.’ What a lovely tribute for his father to receive.
The book was published in the year of Henry’s death in response to appeals from the young members of his congregation, who must have valued him highly. They wanted his sermons to survive and the collection to stand as a memorial to him, which might continue to provide inspiration for future generations.
Unitarians across the country were asked to subscribe, to enable the book to be compiled, printed and distributed. The volume contains a fascinating list of those subscribers, organised by location, so there is long list of names from Newcastle, slightly shorter lists from Nottingham, Manchester & Liverpool, then names from many other places including just two names from Hull and a single name from Bridport, Dorset. These lists must be a historic guide to Unitarians with some money to spare. In Manchester approximately 100 are listed, including a few names that some of us recognise such Mrs Greg (of Quarry Bank Mill) who wanted six copies, Mr Thomas Potter three copies and Mrs Robberds, the wife of the Cross Street chapel minister at that time. There is also an R. Philips, probably the MP for Bury, known for contributing to social and political causes, who paid for 10 copies. The publisher is given as T&J Hodgson at the Chronicle office, Union Street (perhaps in Nottingham?) and sold in London by R. Hunter.
The curious address of the Unitarian chapel in Nottingham intrigued me. I imagined High Pavement to be set up high perhaps on an embankment. When I found myself quite by chance in a little street called Low Pavement, which quickly merged into Middle Pavement, I knew High Pavement must be close. Almost immediately I found myself in High Pavement beside a Victorian-gothic former church, now a Pitcher & Piano bar.
According to a little research High Pavement was, and remains, an attractive street of Georgian buildings running up to the end of St Mary’s church from Weekday Cross, a market place below. Low, Middle and High Pavement were early medieval cobbled streets which made them distinct from dirt tracks. So not very high in a physical sense though there was an incline from Low to High, but definitely above any mud.
Some research on return home revealed that Nottingham had a very early Unitarian chapel, originally established in 1690. There was significant rebuilding in 1805 and Henry Turner was minister there for just 5 years, 1817-1822. The current building which opened in 1876 was used until 1982. The Unitarians then moved to Plumptre Street, not far away, to a former lace finishing factory and still bears a sign High Pavement Chapel.
While Elizabeth Gaskell probably never met Henry Turner (who died in 1822 when she was just 12 years old), there is a strong link between the Turner and Gaskell families. Elizabeth stayed with Henry’s father William Turner (1761-1859), a prominent Unitarian minister in Newcastle and a relative. Elizabeth was related in complicated ways, trebly according to Uglow; William Turner’s mother was Elizabeth’s Great-Aunt, his first wife Mary was a Holland and her mother’s cousin, finally William’s second wife Jane Willetts was the sister of her uncle Peter’s first wife Mary !
William Turner lived with his unmarried daughter Ann and the two women became friends despite an age gap of more than 10 years. Elizabeth stayed for two extended visits, the first in 1829 after her own father’s death and again in 1830. Later after marriage, Elizabeth stayed in touch, as William Turner baptised Meta in 1837. When he finally retired in the early 1840s he came to live near his married daughter Mary in Manchester. Mary had married Rev John Gooch Robberds who was senior minister at Cross St Chapel where William Gaskell became junior minister from 1828. It was probably at the Robberds’ house that William Gaskell met Elizabeth who later visited and read to William Turner in his extreme old age. He died aged 98.
We don’t have many examples of Unitarian sermons at Elizabeth Gaskell’s House. I find it particularly touching that we do have this collection which was compiled out of a spirit of love and affection for a young man who died too young and was undoubtedly a great loss to his community as well as his family. It also stands as a very interesting record of the Unitarians of 1822. It is wonderful that we have managed to restore the book with support from its sponsor Ann Peart, so that it can continue to be read and wondered over.
Jane Mathieson, Volunteer at Elizabeth Gaskell’s House
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