Charles Girdlestone

Charles Girdlestone (1797–1881) was an English clergyman and biblical commentator.

The second son of Samuel Rainbow Girdlestone, a chancery barrister, was born in London in March 1797; Edward Girdlestone, canon of Bristol, was his younger brother. He was educated at Tunbridge School, under Vicesimus Knox, and in 1815 entered Wadham College, Oxford, where he held two exhibitions, one for Hebrew, the other for botany. In 1818 he graduated B.A., with a first class in classics and a second in mathematics, at the same time as Edward Greswell, Josiah Forshall, and Richard Bethell, also of Wadham. He was elected to an open fellowship at Balliol College, and was appointed catechetical, logical, and mathematical lecturer in the college.

He was ordained deacon in 1820 and priest in 1821, taking his M.A. degree in the same year. About this time he became tutor to the twin sons of Sir John Stanley of Alderley Park; it was this connection which led to his being appointed rector of Alderley some years later. In 1822 he was curate at Hastings, and in 1824 at Ferry Hincksey, near Oxford. He was classical examiner for degrees at Oxford in 1825–6, and select preacher to the university in 1825 and 1830.

Shortly after his marriage (1826) he was presented by John William Ward, 4th Viscount Dudley and Ward, on the recommendation of Edward Copleston, to the vicarage of Sedgley, a parish of about 20,000 inhabitants in the south of the Stafford mining district. Here, with the assistance of his patron, he built churches, schools, and parsonages. The place suffered severely from the second cholera pandemic. There were 1,350 cases of cholera and 290 deaths in six weeks in August and September 1832.

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