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Henry Ardern Lewis was born at Worcester in September 1879, and educated at the cities prestigious King’s boarding school, where he gained his Oxford and Cambridge school certificates. After graduating from Oxford University in 1902, with a third class degree in the Great’s, Lewis enrolled as a student at the Leeds Clergy School, a residential theological college of the Church of England. He began his career as a clergyman in 1903, when he was ordained as a deacon at St Asaph’s Cathedral Church, and in accordance with Anglican practice, ordained a priest a year later in 1904. In addition to his duties as a parish priest, Lewis had been studiously working on his Master of Arts degree, which he was awarded under the sponsorship of the dean of Oxford University, on the 25 May 1905.

In September 1905 he enrolled as an assistant chaplain to the South African Church Railway Mission, a philanthropic and evangelical society engaged in providing pastoral care to railway workers and their families. The missionary chaplains travelled mostly on ordinary trains, but sometimes on their own specially adapted railway carriage, which not only provided them with accommodation, but served as makeshift confessional and library.

On his return to England in 1908, Lewis became curate of the Tewksbury Abbey Church of St Mary the Virgin. A former Benedictine monastery, the Abbey Church boasts one of the finest examples of Norman architecture in Britain, and the largest Romanesque transept tower in Europe. The editor of The Tewksbury Parochial Magazine of August 1908 announced Lewis’s appointment with glowing references, adding that: ‘Mr Lewis comes here with the highest credentials for ability and earnestness. The young, we believe, will find in him a special friend.’ The following month, Lewis married miss Dorothy Lewis, the daughter of the Rev. George Lewis, M.A., rector of the parish Church of St Mary the Virgin, in the idyllic Cotswold village of Icomb, where Dorothy was the superintendent of the parish Sunday School.

The Tewksbury Parochial Magazine was once again full of praise when it announced the couples sad departure from the parish in 1910, saying that it was with ‘mixed feelings that Mr. Lewis will be leaving Tewksbury at the end of September, to take up important work in Canada. Mr Lewis has now been with us two years, and during that time he has won golden opinions in the parish where he has worked so whole-heartedly.’

Sailing second class from Liverpool on board the steamer S.S. Canada, Henry and Dorothy embarked on the two and half thousand mile journey from England on 22 October, arriving at Quebec on Monday morning, 31 October 1910. After disembarking, the couple travelled by train on the Canadian Pacific Railway to Regina, the capital city of the Saskatchewan province. There they meet with the diocesan Bishop, where Lewis was briefed on his new parish. Fort Qu’Appelle was established in 1864 as a trading post by the Hudson Bay Company, who, under the direction of its factor, Peter Hourie, transferred the company’s trading post from Troy, to its new site at Fort Qu’Appelle. With a busy network of trails leading across the prairies, and the emergence of a thriving community, the Company opened a much needed general store on Broadway Street in 1897. An Anglican mission was established in 1883, with the rectory built the following year, and the parish church of St. John the Evangelist in 1885.

Eight months after the Lewis’s arrival, the couple appear in the national Census of Canada, held on 1 June, 1911. The census records that they had a 32 year old English domestic living with them by the name of Esther Foster. She may well have already been employed by the Lewis’s prior to their relocation to Canada, when Lewis was rector at Tewksbury. Six days after the census, on 7 June 1911, Lewis attended a general synod held at Regina. According to a local newspaper report, he was listed as the only delegate representing Fort Qu’Appelle. The synod was presided over by  the Venerable Archdeacon Dobie, who had been running an S.P.G. station at St Chad’s Theological College since 1889. Unlike a non-stipendiary minister, Lewis received an annual salary. Prior to 1914, the stipend in the Church of England was worth around £400 a year, the equivalent of £48,000 in today’s money.

In 1915 Lewis returned to England and entered war time service as temporary Royal Navy chaplain. His first ship was HMS Sutlej, a 12,000 ton Cressy-class armoured cruiser built around 1899. As part of the 9th Cruiser Squadron, Sutlej’s main duties were escorting convoy ships around the North Atlantic façade of West Africa. The ships’ log book records that he was discharged to the battleship HMS Britannia at Sierra Leone, about mid-day on 22 March 1917. Two days later, Lewis was transferred to HMS Bacchante, flagship of the 9th Cruiser Squadron. As a Naval chaplain, perhaps one of the most heart-breaking incidents of Lewis’s wartime experience came nearly a year into his service on HMS Bacchante. At around 10am on Thursday, 7 February 1918, Frederick Ernest Parman, a Boy 1st Class, aged sixteen from Small Heath, Birmingham: ‘departed this life … as a result of injuries sustained falling from aloft.’ Bacchante’s logbook records that a funeral party was put ashore at Freetown, Sierra Leone, early the next morning 8 February, where the young sailor was interred at the King Tom Cemetery.

In June 1919, after his discharge from the Navy, Lewis went to Sierra Leone as chaplain to bishop John Walmsley, Dorothy accompanying him to keep house at Bishopscourt. Lewis had first met Walmsley aboard HMS Bacchante, when the bishop took divine service and confirmations. In a written tribute to Walmsley after the bishops death on 9 December 1922, Lewis described him as ‘our Bishop and our best friend.’

Lewis returned to England in 1920, taking up the position of Organising Secretary for the S.P.G. in the diocese of Oxford. The S.P.G. was founded by royal charter in London by the Rev. Dr. Thomas Bray in 1701. The aim of the Society was to ‘take the message of the Gospel’ to overseas colonies in North America, where the Anglican Church was found to be poorly organised and in disarray. The Society quickly expanded to include Canada, New Zealand, Australia and West Africa. In the nineteenth-century, missionary work extended again to include India and South Africa. The couple were living at Box Cottage, Church Walk, Iffley, an idyllic suburban village in Oxford, lined with old cottages, Victorian terraces, and traditional pubs. Headington, where Dorothy was born, was just over a mile and half away to the north east. Lewis recalls that Bishop Walmsley used to pay them flying visits ‘when he was up in Oxford for a gaudy at his old college.’ Sometimes the bishop would stay with them at their ‘little Cornish cottage on the moors,’ possibly a holiday retreat near Bodmin Moor.

In 1922, Lewis became colonial chaplain at Lagos, Nigeria. Three years into his service there, he approached the wealthy industrialist and philanthropist Lord William Leverhulme for a donation towards Church funds. In the early 1900s, the Lever company were using palm oil for its Sunlight Soap products, produced in the British West African colonies. The letter from Lord Leverhulme’s secretary, dated 27 January 1925, expressed his regret that he was unable to donate funds to the Church. Lord Leverhulme died little over three months later on 7 May 1925.

After seven years of service at Lagos, and now aged 50, Lewis returned to England in 1929, becoming Vicar of the parish Church of St. Cleer, Cornwall. It was here that he met the archaeologist Charles Kenneth Croft Andrew, one of the founder members of the Looe Old Cornwall Society in 1927. In a letter to W.H. Paynter in 1972, Croft Andrew fondly recalled that: ‘When we moved from Looe to St. Cleer in 1931, we found him up there as Vicar and thought him the best parish priest we had ever known.’ Due to their mutual interest in antiquarian subjects, the two men struck up a close personal friendship.

In 1933, Lewis took up the incumbency of Talland Church. It is here that he first heard about the legend of Lammana. In his letter to Paynter, Croft Andrew states that: ‘When he took the living of Talland, I told him the story and legend of Lammana, which he afterwards developed into his booklets The Child Christ … Ab Antiquo &c.’ The medieval Priory of St Michael of Lammana consisted of two chapels once owned by the Benedictine monks of Glastonbury Abbey. The chapel on the summit of Looe Island was thought to date back to the foundation of Celtic Christianity. A chapel on the mainland faced directly opposite the island, not far from Hannafore, West Looe. A local legend of unknown antiquity stated that in ancient times, St Joseph of Arimathea, the rich man of the gospels, was a tin merchant who used to visit Britain and particularly Cornwall, in order to purchase tin. On one such visit, he brought his young nephew with him. Whilst Joseph went ashore to the mainland to trade with the Cornish tinner’s, the boy Jesus played on the beach of Looe Island until his uncles return.

On Saturday 20 January 1934, Lewis gave what would turn out to be a seminal talk to the Looe Old Cornwall Society. According to the Recorder’s Notebook, the meeting  was held at two-thirty in the afternoon at the Imperial Café, until quite recently Palfrey’s Bakery, Fore Street, East Looe. It was recorded that: ‘A hearty vote of thanks was given to the Rev H.A. Lewis for his paper which further traced the Joseph of Arimathea tradition as having after the Crucifixion founded the first Christian Church at Glastonbury; and as the paper seemed to be of more than ordinary importance it was entrusted to Mr Andrew to convey to the editor of The Cornish Times, along with a covering note to inform the editor that the paper was on the way so that he might reserve space for its publication.’ The talk was printed in its entirety, appearing on Friday 26 January 1934 entitled Did Christ Visit Cornwall?, and printed as a booklet the same year as The Child Christ at Lammana, distributed by W.H. Smith & Son.

The following year proved to be a pivotal one in the story of Lammana, and for Lewis’s involvement in the subsequent three day archaeological excavations carried out between 17-19 October 1935. In a letter to A.E. Hurford, President of the Looe O.C.S., dated 9 March 1932, Mr. T.M. Stanier, land steward for the Duchy of Cornwall’s office based in Liskeard, gave his full backing for the Society to take charge of preserving the portion of wall known then as the ‘Priest’s House,’ at Hannafore:

‘The prevailing portion of wall,’ he wrote: ‘is the Duchy property and if the Looe Old Cornwall Society will take charge of it and preserve it, then I have no doubt that permission may be granted for this purpose. So far as I know it is not scheduled under

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the ‘Ancient Monuments Act.’ I think that the purchaser of the building plot on the Looe side has cleared off the growth on his side of the wall, and now is the appropriate time for the whole of the wall to be attended to.’

Developers had purchased land on the ‘Looe side,’ in order to build a housing estate, and negotiations were in progress with a view to the purchase of more land from the Duchy, including the derelict remains of the Lammana chapel. Despite obtaining permission to carry out excavations as early as 1929, the situation suddenly became critical, and in a desperate attempt to record the site for posterity, Croft Andrew again sought permission to carry out an emergency excavation in order to try and block the sale of land. But funds were limited and the mood amongst the locals was apathetic. He held a meeting on site with Stanier and Lord Radnor, ‘according to whom,’ Croft Andrew later wrote, ‘the Duchy Council was sceptical of there being any Chapel at all.’ So in order to confirm his assertions that the building was in fact the remains of a medieval chapel: ‘three of us put our hands into our own pockets: Lewis, C.B. Willcocks, F.R.I.B.A., F.S.A., and myself.’ Work started on Thursday, 17 October 1935, with a report appearing in The Cornish Times six days later. In Croft Andrew’s letter to W.H. Paynter, he fondly recalls that: ‘on an archaeological site with a trowel in his hand, he would terrify me.’ Nevertheless, the outcome must have been very satisfying for both lay and clergyman, as the Duchy granted permission for further excavations to be carried out, with Croft Andrew appointed supervisor of the dig.

Eighteen months after The Child Christ at Lammana, Lewis published Ab Antiquo, subtitled ‘The Story of Lammana (Looe Island),’ dedicated to Prior Helyas, the first documented incumbent of Lammana in 1200, ‘and All His Predecessors.’ The work is much to be commended for its copious references to a wide range of historical documents charting the medieval history of Lammana, ranging from Episcopal Registers, Close Rolls, Deeds, Feudal Aids and Charters, right through to the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The title is taken from the charter of Hasculf de Soleigny, c.1200, in which he gives the island of St Michael of Lammana and all its lands ‘as a gift of my predecessors ab antiquo’ to the Church of St Mary of Glastonbury.

A second campaign of excavations at the mainland chapel site began on Monday 14 September 1936. In personal correspondence to Lewis, Croft Andrew indicated that his intention was to uncover and record as much material and photographic evidence as possible. Starting from trench A in the south-west corner of the chapel, a series of twenty trenches were dug in order to clear the whole site of top soil. Over the course of three weeks, ending on 3 October 1936, the finds were numerous and varied; including ridge tiles, plaster, human remains and animal bones, a variety of pottery locally sourced and from the continent, roofing tiles, and in the north-east corner of the nave, evidence of post holes, suggesting an earlier wooden structure may have once occupied the site. Of particular interest were pottery sherds of Romano-Cornish origin, and a sherd of Samian ware found with a skeleton more than two feet under the chancel floor. Other finds of Black-Burnished ware from the Monk’s House were dated to the 2nd or 3rd century AD by the distinguished archaeologist Dr Ralegh Radford, who had been carrying out excavations at Tintagel.

In 1936 Lewis took up the residency of St Michael and All Angels Church, Penwerris. The parish of Penwerris was created in 1848 from out of St Budock to serve Falmouth’s increasing population, with its Beacon estate built to house around 3,000 employees in its busy dockyards. Despite the onset of war with Germany, Lewis still managed to find time to write, and in 1939 published his third booklet, Christ in Cornwall? This was a major departure from his two earlier publications, which focused almost entirely on the earlier medieval history, and oral legends associated with Lammana. In support of the war effort, Lewis enrolled in the local volunteer defence force, the Home Guard, leading cycle patrol’s around the streets of Falmouth and outlying villages. A member of his platoon recalls that in typical Dad’s Army fashion, the only weapon they had between them, was the vicar’s WWI 9mm automatic pistol. Until the Geneva Conventions of 1949, military chaplains of both World War’s carried firearms, more usually a pistol. A combatant in the Second World War recalls ‘the tall figure of the battalion chaplain, swinging good style with his .38 [revolver] on his hip.’

In December 1943, Lewis resigned the benefice of Penwerris and was given permission to officiate in the diocese of Truro. By the beginning of 1944 he had taken up residence at the Parsonage, St. Martin’s Church on the Isles of Scilly. Although Crockford’s Clerical Directory makes no mention of this in his career, there is a memorial plaque in the churchyard which reads: ‘IN MEMORIAM, HENRY ARDERN LEWIS, Priest in charge 1944-1950.’ In 1945 Lewis published his last booklet, St Martin’s, St Helen’s and Teän (Isles of Scilly) in legend and history, printed by the royal printers, Oscar Blackford Ltd. The second edition of 1948 was revised and enlarged with the addition of photographs of himself and Dorothy.

Immediately after the end of the Second World War, Lewis had carried out archaeological investigations at Knackyboy and Yellow Rock Cairns, at St. Martins. Indeed, these two sites couldn’t have been more convenient, as they lie in an adjacent field to the Parsonage. The cairns are Bronze Age burial mounds, otherwise known as ‘cist graves.’ He discovered the top of a menhir which had been broken off from its base, with a crude carving of a human figure showing its head and shoulders, which he re-erected on top of the cairn. In a footnote to the third edition of Christ in Cornwall 1948, Lewis says: ‘On St. Martin’s, Scilly, I have recently found much pottery of the Bronze age (c. 1000 B.C.), which has decoration of high artistic merit together with an exceptionally beautiful blue bead, which must have been made in Egypt or Phoenicia, and been imported to Scilly by traders from the Mediterranean.’ He once again returned to the theme of St Joseph of Arimathea, and a tradition connecting him to Tresco and Merchants’ Point, an argument centred around the identification of the Isles of Scilly as the Cassiterides, the ‘tin-islands’ mentioned in antiquity. His finds lead to the visit of Bryan O’Neil, Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments for the Ministry of Works, and his wife Helen in 1947. Lewis went on to publish a short article in the Antiquities Journal, Vol. 29, of 1949, entitled ‘Cist at St. Martin’s, Scilly.’

Twelve years after the publication of The Child Christ at Lammana, a series of letters appeared in the Manchester Guardian, which shed a fascinating light on how the booklet was received by its readers, as well as giving us an invaluable insight into Lewis’s method of research during the mid-1930’s. The catalyst for this exchange appears to have been a letter from the Rev. Paul Stacy of Glastonbury. In a letter to the editor dated April 1948, Stacy had asserted that the excavations carried out at Lammana in 1935-6, were what he called a ‘link’ to the legend of Joseph of Arimathea. This was followed by a letter from Mr. H.B. Painter on 23 April, a resident of Glastonbury, in which he asked ‘What links?’ Painter argued that there was no evidence to support the legend, saying that: ‘In Mr. Stacy’s story, facts supported by evidence are few and far between. It has as much value and as little, as the writings of the Rev. H.A. Lewis, also quoted by Mr. Stacy. Mr Lewis is, or was,’ Painter added, ‘a real legend-hunter. He visited me in Glastonbury some years ago, attracted by the name on my garden gate, [Talland], which is that of the parish of which he was vicar.’ Although Painter found him charming company, he thought him ‘very quick off the trigger where legends were concerned.’ But Painter's sharpest criticism was aimed at Lewis' use of oral evidence, which he acquired by interviewing local people in the Looe and Polperro area.

But Painters sharpest criticism was aimed at Lewis’s use of oral evidence, which he acquired by interviewing local people in the Looe and Polper area.

Based on his own personal experien, Painter said that he had never heard such sayings or proverbs himself, and he cites his own grandmother who died in 1936 aged 101, ‘whose memory went back to events which happened in 1840 , telling stories associated with these places … and that I never heard any reference to the story …’ [of Joseph of Arimathea]. In his reply to Painter, dated 14 May 1948, Mr Stacy refuted Painter’s claim about his centenarian grandmother. According to Lewis, she had confirmed a version of the legend related to him by Mr Lightowler, Recorder of the Looe Old Cornwall Society. An entry in the Recorder’s Notebook states that:

Based on his own personal experience Painter said that he had never heard such sayings or proverbs himself, and he cites his own grandmother who died in 1936 aged 101, ‘whose memory went back to events which happened in 1840, telling stories associated with these places … and that I never heard any reference to the story …’ [of Joseph of Arimathea]. In his reply to Painter, dated 14 May 1948, Mr Stacy refuted Painter’s claim about his centenarian grandmother. According to Lewis, she had confirmed a version of the legend related to him by Mr Lightowler, Recorder of the Looe Old Cornwall Society. An entry in the Recorder’s Notebook states that:

‘Rev H.A. Lewis on April 21st at another pilgrimage, stated to those at the tea table he had been visiting Mrs Painter of Looe who is an old woman of 98 years. He had spoken of this folk lore to her asking her if she had ever heard of it. She at once replied “They used to tell that when I was a bit of a maid. Of course I’ve heard of it.” A few days after the paper was read I met Miss Shapcott [Vice President of the Looe O.C.S.] who told me that she could recollect the legend from her earliest childhood days. Also that her mother used to sing the song: "Joseph of Arimathea was a tin man" to them. I gathered from her remarks it was a sort of lullaby.'

T

he paper was read I met Miss Shapcott  [Vice President of the Looe O.C.S.] who told me that she could recollect the legend from her earliest childhood days. Also that her mother used to sing the song “Joseph of Arimathea was a tin man” to them. I gathered from her remarks it was a sort of lullaby.’

The Rev. Stacy’s rebuff was: ‘If Mrs Painter did tell her grandson, he has forgotten; if she did not, it may have been because she did not think he would understand or believe it.’ One can add to this that similar traditions were repeated independently from one another at many other places throughout Cornwall and Somerset; and therefore, would seem unlikely to be the result of one person’s attempt to popularise the story.

There followed a gap in the correspondence of fifteen months, only to be revived once again by a letter from Painter to Croft Andrew in August 1949. Clearly Painter had got the bit between his teeth, and wasn’t prepared to let it go. ‘A correspondent in our local paper’ he wrote, ‘has been making what seem to me rather dogmatic statements ... One of his statements was to the effect that important links were unearthed, showing that Looe was one of the landing places of the Holy Family.’ Croft Andrew’s reply came three days later in which he stated that the newspaper correspondent was ‘not justified in asserting or implying that we unearthed any evidence “showing that Looe was one of the landing places of the Holy Family.” ’

Despite the controversy caused by the letters to the Manchester Guardian, Lewis was made a Cornish bard on Saturday, 4 September 1948, at the Gorsedh Kernow held at Carwynnen Quoit, near Camborne. His bardic name was ‘Dyskybel Malgan,’ Disciple of Maelgwn, the 6th century king of Gwynedd, Wales.

As the memorial plaque in St. Martins churchyard indicates, Lewis served the parish up until 1950, but a public notice in the London Gazette indicates that the couple were still living at the Parsonage after that date, and that Dorothy may well have become seriously ill during this time. The Gazette records that she passed away on 30 October 1951. The last years of his life found Lewis back on the mainland, living at number 4, Regent Terrace, Penzance. Twenty-eight years after he first arrived in Cornwall to take charge of the parish Church of St Cleer, Henry Ardern Lewis passed away at the West Cornwall Hospital, Penzance, on 28 March 1957, aged 77. The cause of death was recorded as bronchopneumonia. An obituary in the Western Morning News of 21 April, described him as ‘A Fine Scholar,’ but his lasting legacy is perhaps The Child Christ at Lammana, a timeless classic in the legendary history of Looe Island and its often romantic association with Glastonbury Abbey. The Rev. Henry Ardern Lewis is Buried at Paul Parish Church, Penzance.