More than just a man of the cloth

Anton Rippon reveals the fascinating life story of John Erskine Clarke, the man responsible for the construction of Derby's St Andrew's Church and a children's book publisher to boot.

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IT is getting on for 30 years since they knocked down Derby’s St Andrew’s Church. For more than a century, the “Railwaymen’s Church”, as it was known, dominated the skyline of London Road and there are still many Derbeians who have fond memories of worshipping there.

They may be less aware, however, that the church they once attended stood as a tribute to a remarkable clergyman, the man who conceived it, raised the funds for its construction and oversaw its building.

A man of boundless energy, John Erskine Clarke not only repeated this feat many times over after he moved to London but he was also a pioneer in the world of religious and children’s publishing.

Born in Calcutta in 1827, Clarke was the son of a Scottish official of the East India Company. When his father died in 1835, the family returned to Edinburgh and, in 1846, Clarke graduated from Wadham College, Oxford. He stayed on for an extra year to study theology.

Ordained as curate of St Mary’s, Low Harrogate, in 1851, Clarke moved, a year later, to become curate at St Mary’s, Lichfield.

In 1856, he arrived in Derby to take up an appointment as vicar of St Michael’s, in Queen Street.

Finding the church in need of repair, he set about what amounted to a rebuild.

It was during his stay at St Michael’s that Clarke started what is generally regarded as the world’s first church parish magazine, the insert of which was included in parish magazines throughout the country and which he continued to edit until 1895.

Clarke’s time in Derby also saw him branch out into children’s publishing. Dismayed by the blood and thunder “penny dreadfuls” of the time, in 1863 he founded The Prize, a magazine for young children.

The success of that prompted him to launch a similar publication for older children. Clarke approached a London publisher, William Macintosh, and, with the help of a wood engraver named Johnston, he produced a halfpenny weekly paper called Chatterbox, the first edition of which went on sale on December 1, 1866.

In 1870, the magazine was transferred to another London publisher, Wells Gardner, who continued to publish it for the next 60 years.

Meanwhile, in 1871, Clarke started another weekly newspaper, Church Bells, this time aimed at adults and which he continued to edit until 1906.

But it is for St Andrew’s Church that John Erskine Clarke must be best remembered in Derby.

Clarke recalled how he had come to be involved in the building of a church that was so desperately needed to care for the pastoral wants of the thousands of railway workers who had moved into newly-built, tight terraced streets in the ancient township of Lichfield.

His own church bursting at the seams each Sunday, he was walking towards Derby Midland Station in the company of the “Bishop of the Peak”, vicar of Tideswell, Canon Andrew, when Andrew told him: “You should do something to relieve the pressure on St Michael’s.”

Clarke said: “When the church continued to be overcrowded, year after year, the parishioners complained of the inconvenience... I took the hint and that very day I saw Mr Hope, the vicar of St Peter’s, and, in a note under date of October 16, 1861, he gave me ‘permission to put up an iron church near the station, with the ultimate object of building a [permanent] church’.

“The next point was to find a site. In those days, the land between Hulland Street and the railway bridge was a swampy waste and on it there lay a number of huge iron tubes which were being cast at the foundries in connection with the works of an Indian railway.

“The land belonged to C. Burton Brough, of Chetwynd Park, Shropshire, from whom the Midland Railway had bought the meadows now occupied by the station and works.”

Clarke was certainly correct in his description of the land. In 1862, the only buildings between the London Road railway bridge and the Navigation Inn were the large house of William Jeffrey Etches and a couple of cottages.

The likes of Clifton Street, still largely a quagmire, and Barlow Street, which was to be laid out on land once the site of a large house belonging to the civil engineer of the Midland Railway, were scarcely off the drawing board.

Clarke continued: “I wrote to Mr Brough to ask for a site. He replied that the land was in trust and that he could not give it away but that he would promise £1,000 towards its purchase if I built a church, parsonage and schools, or £400 if I built the church alone.”

A building committee began to raise funds, which came in so fast from the shareholders of the Midland Railway that there was soon more than enough money to erect an iron church. It was decided to build a brick school-church until a permanent church and school could be built.

Eventually, the permanent St Andrew’s rose up, at a cost of £40,000, with Clarke and his sister both contributing generously to the cause.

The cornerstone was laid by the Duke of Devonshire on Easter Tuesday, March 29, 1864, and, after several delays, the completed church was consecrated by Bishop Londsale on Ascension Day, May 10, 1866.

St Andrew’s had been designed by the prolific Victorian architect, Sir Gilbert Scott, among whose many works was the magnificent St Pancras, fittingly the station into which trains from Derby have run for well over a century.

Clarke continued to minister at both St Michael’s and St Andrew’s until Whitsuntide 1867, when he felt obliged to take over full-time at St Andrew’s, which was growing apace.

In 1869, a large schoolroom, which Clarke had erected at his own expense, opened. It cost around £1,000 and eventually Clarke gifted it to the church that he had helped to build.

Other important work followed: the opening of a middle-class school; the beginning of work on the parsonage; and the laying of a permanent floor in the chancel.

In 1872, Clarke left Derby, although for many years he returned each Whit Tuesday to preach at the children’s treat service.

He had lived in the town for 15 years, during which time he had made a great impact on its spiritual life. Now he went to become vicar of Battersea in London.

His place was taken by the Rev Melville H. Scott, lately the vicar of Ockbrook and brother of Sir Gilbert Scott who had, of course, designed St Andrew’s.

Melville Scott soon found himself appealing to Midland Railway shareholders for more funds to cover continuing financial difficulties which had arisen from the building of the church.

Like Clarke, Scott also remained at St Andrew’s for six years, during which time the temporary wooden reredos were replaced by a rich arcading of Chellaston marble, a new organ was installed at a cost of £820 and £300 was spent on oak screenwork to divide the north and south chancel aisles.

In 1878, the Rev Robert Hey became vicar of St Andrew’s – Melville Scott moved to St Mary’s, Lichfeld, where Clarke had once been curate – and Hey’s incumbency saw further work, not least the completion of St Andrew’s tower.

The finishing of the tower, the building of the spire – which saw St Andrew’s rise 200ft over London Road and became a landmark as far away as Normanton, Chaddesden, Spondon and even Quarndon – and a new peal of eight bells cost a total of £4,500, to which many local worthies contributed, including Michael Thomas Bass MP, H.H. Bemrose, Sir Abraham Woodiwiss and C. Burton Borough.

One other name on the list of contributors was also very familiar to the parishioners of St Andrew’s – that of John Erskine Clarke.

In London, Clarke had founded the Provident Dispensary in Battersea and also the Vicarage School for Girls, initially in an old vicarage near the Thames before he relocated it to Clapham Common.

The school’s first principal also came from Derby – presumably Clarke had got to know her during his time there – and she was still in charge when the Vicarage School closed in 1910.

John Erskine Clarke is still remembered in Battersea as a builder of churches. Just as he had been the force behind the construction of St Andrew’s in Derby, so, between 1872 and 1890, he oversaw the building of the churches of St Mark’s, St Peter’s, St Matthew’s and St Luke’s in his new home.

In 1875, he became an honorary canon of Winchester and was appointed rural dean in 1880. A member of the board of governors of the Provident Dispensary in Battersea, Clarke saw there was an urgent need for an in-patient hospital in Battersea.

Raising funds by public subscription and charitable gifts, Clarke purchased a house belonging to Viscount Bolingbroke and founded a “house of sickness”, the Bolingbroke Hospital, in 1880, which provided care for, in Clarke's own words, “the artisan or self-respecting middle-class people who preferred to make some payment for their care rather than go into a Poor Law institution”.

Clarke’s achievements in London are reflected in his subsequent appointments. In 1895, he was made Honorary Chaplain to Queen Victoria and, after her death in 1901, Honorary Chaplain to King Edward VII.

In 1905, he was made Honorary Canon of Southwark and, in 1910, Honorary Chaplain to King George V.

In 1916, John Erskine Clarke suffered a severe stroke. He died in 1920, aged 92.

The church that he founded in Derby lasted rather longer, until 1970, in fact, when it was demolished to make way for the offices known as St Andrew’s House. Some parts survived even that fate. The rood (or crucifix) figures were moved to St Martin’s Church, in Church Street, Alfreton.

Charles J. Payne, writing in his 1893 Derby Churches Old and New, said of St Andrew’s: “Its form may be briefly described as a nave of four bays, with clerestory, south porch and tower and spire. The roof is 70ft above the ground and the view, from the west end of the noble chancel arch, with its clustered columns and its fluted and nail-head mouldings, 54ft high, and the stained apse windows beyond, present a striking and symmetrical picture.

“St Andrew’s is peculiarly rich in stained glass, nearly the whole of what may be termed the ground-floor windows being filled with it, according to the original designs of the architect.”

The Railwaymen’s Church was, said, Payne, quite simply, “the stateliest in the town”. John Erskine Clarke would have been proud of that.

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