General information

▶Date of birth:  26 February 1871        Place of birth: Lurgan, Armagh, Ireland

▶Father:  James Irwin     Mother: Jeanetta Rebecca Stephenson

▶Spouse(s):  Theresa Ritchie Forbes    Date(s) of marriage:  28 July 1920     Place(s) of marriage: Trinity Church, Marylebone

▶Occupation: Scholar, Professor; Clergyman (Anglican), Church  administrator; Author, Editor

▶Lifestory: Born into a Wesleyan Methodist family, the Revd. George Freeman Irwin became an Anglican clergyman, troubled in later years by his wife’s irregular financial dealings. He was born in Lurgan, Armagh, in 1871, the fourth and youngest son of James Irwin, Wesleyan Methodist minister, and his wife Jeanetta Rebecca (née Stephenson). He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, BA (1st in his year in Senior Moderations and Large Gold Medal in Modern Literature) 1894, MA 1898, BD 1901; he also won several other gold and silver medals in connection with the University Philosophical Society and the College Historical Society, of which he was Auditor (equivalent to President of the Union).

Freeman took holy orders and was ordained Deacon (London) in 1898, and Priest in 1899. After graduating he was appointed Pfeiffer Professor of English Literature at Alexander College, Dublin 1895-8, but left to pursue his calling in England in the Church.

In 1898 he was licensed Curate of St Thomas, Stepney, moving with his Rector as Curate to St Helen’s Church in Kensington 1899-1901. He was initiated into the Freemasons’ Lodge of Progress in London in 1901. His work in Kensington was followed by a brief return to Ireland, to achieve his BD degree, with which he obtained the Elrington Theological Prize, the university’s highest postgraduate divinity distinction, and to assist as Curate of St Columb’s Cathedral, Derry 1901-2, before he returned to England as Curate of Mortlake 1902-4, where he lectured on English history on top of his clerical duties. James Cassidy’s collection of tales Love is love (1903), was dedicated to Irwin, in memory of their shared summer trip to Montreal.

He then moved into an administrative role, as Clerical Secretary of the Church of England League 1905-8 and of the National Church League 1907-8, before returning to active parish duties as  Vicar of Wallington, Surrey 1908-23. Between 1914 and 1923 he served as Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of Chelmsford. In 1920 he married Theresa Ritchie, daughter of physician Alexander Forbes MD, of Hillsborough Lodge, Sheffield, in Marylebone.

After his long stay in Wallington he was presented by the Simeon’s Trustees to a post in East Anglia, as Vicar of St Margaret, Ipswich 1923, but he retained it for only a few months. He was said to have lived there in lavish style, “engaging a suite of rooms at one of the most expensive hotels in Ipswich and travelling fairly extensively in  England and Europe”; his wife was sued for fraud and it seemed that she had been accumulating money from various sources, including her husband, since 1920 (the case was settled out of court).

In 1922, a Member of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia of Rosicrucian Freemasons, he was a founding officer of its London College of Adapts. He published a short pamphlet in 1923, entitled Prayer Book teaching: the ministry of the Church, and was Editor of the Church Gazette (an office he retained until at least 1939, and for which he had written since at least 1907), but he remained without a cure until 1926, when he came to St Paul’s, Cheltenham as its Vicar 1926-9, and from 1926 Chaplain to the Cheltenham Union Workhouse; between 1927 and 1929 he lived at St Paul’s Vicarage (now Clarence Villa), Clarence Square, in Pittville. He was not clear of the Ipswich problems in Cheltenham, as he was sued again for money owed to the proprietress of an art needlework business in Ipswich (again the matter was settled out of court).

While in Cheltenham the Revd. Irwin served on the Committees of St Paul’s and St Mary’s Training Colleges, and was a Governor of Dean Close School. After Cheltenham he held the vicarage of All Saints, Wandsworth in Surrey for eighteen years, 1929-47, at the same time continuing his earlier role as Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of Chelmsford.

Irwin lived latterly at 10 Keswick Road, Putney, Middlesex, and died of pneumonia in 1950 at St Andrew’s Hospital, Northampton, at the age of seventy-eight.

▶Moved to Pittville from: Ipswich       Moved from Pittville to: Wandsworth, Surrey

▶Date of death:  15 February 1950      Place of death: St Andrew’s Hospital, Northampton

▶Date of burial:         Place of burial:

▶Notes: Croydon Guardian 28 March 1908; Daily Mirror  23 May 1928     ID: 14910

Contributor(s):  John Simpson/Alan Munden