Curate a good egg
Coleshill curate the Rev Edmund Arblaster, headmaster of schools at Cork and Carlisle, classicist, chess champion and priest, was a man of parts, according to his obituary in the Old Edwardians Gazette and Year book of 1936/37.*
His name appears on a 1923 edition of the church monthly magazine, curate to the vicar, the Ven John Richards, Archdeacon of Aston.
His gentle and kindly disposition was taken advantage of when teaching: he would have been much more successful as a college don than as a schoolmaster. On return to Birmingham he devoted himself to coaching and examination work, examining for Cambridge University for 45 years.
Always a keen churchman he helped at St Andrew’s Bordesley, and finally took Holy Orders in 1920 at the age of 69.
For eight years after ordination he served “acceptably” as curate here. He was a familiar figure striding along the country lanes for miles around. In 1928 he was preferred to the rectory of Whitsbury, Hampshire, “where he laboured vigorously and effectively” until his death at 85 on 8 January 1937.
His obituary concluded: “As schoolmaster and priest he was a man of parts. He was the right sort of classical teacher, because his interests were not only classical. He was the right sort of priest, because his interests were not only clerical.
*reproduced with the kind permission of the Governors of the Foundation of the Schools of King Edward VI in Birmingham