▶Date of birth:   9 March 1877       Place of birth: Wortley, Yorkshire

▶Father:  Thomas Andrews     Mother: Mary Hannah Stanley

▶Spouse(s): Mary Elizabeth Barnes        Date(s) of marriage:  5 September  1911   Place(s) of marriage: St Martin’s Church, Scarborough

▶Occupation: Industrialist: Steel-manufacturer; Scientist: Metallurgist; Clergyman (Anglican), Author

▶Lifestory: The Revd. Charles Reginald Andrews was brought up to expect a future in the Sheffield steel industry, and it was only after the First World War that he dedicated himself to the Church; he and his wife clearly had an attachment to Cheltenham, and he retired there around 1945. He was born at Wortley in Yorkshire in 1877, the son of Thomas Andrews FRS, Civil Engineer and  Director of the Sheffield firm of Messrs. Thomas Andrews & Co. Ltd., steel-manufacturers, and his wife Mary Hannah (née Stanley). As a young man, Andrews studied metallurgy, and read papers before the Royal Society and the Institution of Civil Engineers; he was a Member of the Iron and Steel Institution.

In 1907 he succeeded his father as Chairman and Managing Director of Andrews & Co.; in 1913 he became a Member of the Sheffield Chamber of Commerce. Andrews was married in 1911, to Mary Elizabeth Barnes, of Scarborough; she was the Principal of the Lilford House Nursing Home in which he was a patient at the time of the census in 1911.

After the Great War he felt that he wished to dedicate his life to the Christian Church. It is not clear why he first came to Cheltenham, but from at least 1920 he and his wife lived at Springfield, on Leckhampton Road in the town: they retained a residence in Cheltenham despite his academic and clerical duties elsewhere.

In preparation for entering the Church Andrews matriculated at St Catherine’s College, Cambridge, BA 1926. He took holy orders and was ordained Deacon in 1924, and Priest in 1925. Once a Deacon he was licensed as a Curate of St Mary the Great, Cambridge 1924-6, after which he obtained Permission to Officiate at Sawston, Cambridgeshire 1926-7, where he became Curate-in-Charge. In 1927 he became Vicar of Stow with Quy, Cambridgeshire 1927-9. He moved out of Cambridgeshire in 1930; in 1930 he also lived at 1 Pittville Crescent in Cheltenham, and was at the same time installed as Rector of Bulwick with Laxton, Northamptonshire 1930-4.

By 1934 he and his wife lived at 6 Christchurch Road, Cheltenham, and for a short while he was licensed as Assistant Curate at All Saints’ Church, near Pittville in Cheltenham, but in 1935 he moved north to his native Wortley as Vicar of St Leonard’s Church (he would not move until the Vicarage had been put into “a proper state of repair”), where he remained until 1937; he and his wife were plagued by ill health and eventually he retired from Wortley to Cambridgeshire, specifically for the sake of his wife’s health.

He continued with clerical responsibilities, and between 1937 and 1940 received Permission to Officiate at St Edmundsbury, Suffolk. From Cambridgeshire they moved back to Cheltenham around 1945, living at 129 Leckhampton Road, where he remained until his death, aged seventy-five, in 1952; he was buried at St Peter’s Church in Leckhampton. Two years before his death he published an account of his grandfather’s ironworks in Wortley: The story of Wortley Ironworks: a record of eight centuries of Yorkshire industry.

▶Moved to Pittville from:  Stow with Quy, Cambridgeshire      Moved from Pittville to: Wortley, Yorkshire

▶Date of death:  11 October 1952      Place of death: Cheltenham

▶Date of burial: 15 October 1952        Place of burial: St Peter’s Church in Leckhampton

▶Notes:        ID: 14492

Contributor(s):  John Simpson/Alan Munden