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Mr Basil Vincent - Part 3 (March 1993)

 Basil tells us about the Vanishing Rector of Feltwell; a story which made the national newspapers of the time, notably "John Bull".

The Reverend Alfred Phillips came to the village in 1925; he was the most beautifully groomed man I have ever seen, with a head of white wavy hair. He cycled everywhere, in shorts and a summer jacket when it was hot, but when he came to church to take a service, he always had a car to drive him. He came into the school quite a lot, as all the correspondence had to be signed by the Rector as well as the Headmaster. I had a bicycle so Mr Fassnedge would send me to cycle up to the Rectory in the Lodge Road with the letters if it was urgent. He kept that Rectory and gardens as perfectly as he kept himself; there was not a weed to be seen from the house to the road and all over the gardens. The gardener was Mr Percy Shingfield. Mr Phillips was a most generous and kindly man; all the church fetes took place up at the Rectory and anyone could go and play tennis there. It was a huge house and beautiful inside, it had thirty rooms and a housekeeper called Mrs Trammer. The living was worth £1500 a year, a tremendous amount in those days, and in the direct gift of the Lord Chancellor; it allowed him to live in style. In the words of John Bull, "Feltwell looked with awe upon its new Rector. Tall and very broad chested with the clothes of a prince and the manners of a diplomat, he dominated not only his church but the whole community by his splendid presence." He was a very kind man to all the village and would often buy us children ice cream cornets after school.

We never saw Mrs Phillips; Dr Francis, a very cleaver man, used sometimes to come to the YMCA when I was there. (I was really too young to be there but because my older brother was there, I got in and sometimes heard things I shouldn't have heard!) He said Mrs Phillips was a princess from India, where the Rector had worked before, for a missionary society. Anyway, there was great speculation about her as you can imagine. We children used to think she was kept locked up! He always had two curates who he paid monthly on Saturdays; one Saturday one of them called in at the Crown Inn and consumed a lot of beer, arriving at Choir Practice in a bad state. He soon left Feltwell and came to a very tragic end.

There was always a big congregation in those days and never more so than on Remembrance Sunday. You have to remember how close the Great War was to us and the relations of all those killed in it would come to hear their names read. On his first Armistice Sunday in the village, Mr Phillips wore a row of medals, so we all assumed he was a military man. The Rector had been instrumental in forming a branch of the British Legion in the village; Lord Walsingham, D.S.O. was the first President and the Rector was the Chairman. There was, of course, a lot of people who had served in the war, so they were naturally interested in him and the career he had in the Army before coming to us. Let the April 15th, 1933 John Bull tell you the rest: "Rumours began to be whispered in Feltwell, after the Rector had preached a magnificent sermon on last Armistice Sunday, on the heroism and the dignities of war as he had himself witnessed them. With the intention of dispelling these rumours, a local man resident in Hill House, Captain H. D. Briggs, C.M.G., R.N., approached the War Office. The sequel was a special meeting of the British Legion at which the Rector resigned his chairmanship and membership.

"Following representations made to him by the churchwardens of Feltwell, the Bishop of Ely directed the Rector to summon a special meeting of the Church Council. It took place in a schoolroom, attended by local businessmen and farmers. Mr Phillips insisted on presiding himself. Many questions were fired at him. There had been a misunderstanding, he said, about his war wounds; the scarring had in fact been caused by typhoid when he was out in India. The memories which formed the subject of his last Armistice day sermon were a misapprehension on the congregation's behalf. The medals he wore had been sent to him in error for another man called Phillips; he had disregarded the detail of the inscription and worn them himself.

"As chairman of the meeting the Rector put it that his explanations were satisfactory and acceptable. He called for a show of hands. Not one went up. The PCC had to face the fact that their war hero had never been nearer to the war than the parish of Ramsgate of which he had been curate at the time. The PCC arranged to send a report to the Bishop of Ely the next day. But the Rector forestalled them: he wrote to the Bishop resigning from the living on the grounds of ill health and returned the flags and standard to the British Legion.

No one ever saw him after that night in Feltwell. But you have to admit he had the last laugh: because he resigned on the grounds of sickness, he took with him £300 per annum as a pension, so that the next Rector had that much less! Whatever he was or he wasn't, he was a very kind and stylish man who kept the Rectory beautifully and was most hospitable.

The complete text of the John Bull story.

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