▶Date of birth: 10 July 1868     Place of birth: Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire

▶Father:  Thomas Tonkinson            Mother: Mary Anne Silvester

▶Spouse(s): Mary Louisa Nock     Date(s) of marriage:  28 April 1903     Place(s) of marriage: Longdon-upon-Tern, Shropshire

▶Occupation: Schoolmaster; Clergyman (Anglican), Author

▶Lifestory: Thomas Silvester Tonkinson spend his life in the Midlands and the South-West, coming to Cheltenham in 1902 as a curate at St Mary’s. He was born in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, in 1868, the son of Thomas Tonkinson, schoolmaster, of Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, and his wife Mary Anne (née Silvester). He attended Hanlet School of Art in 1889, and went on to the University of London, BA 1892.

Tonkinson took holy orders and was ordained Deacon in 1893, and Priest (both Durham) in 1894. In 1893 he was licensed Curate of Stanley, Crook, Co. Durham, and in 1895 moved on to become Curate of Christ Church, Stone, Staffordshire, where he remained until 1900. In that year he moved again, to take up an appointment as Curate of Wellington, Shropshire until 1902, when he became Curate of St Mary’s, Cheltenham until 1909; in 1903 he married Mary Louisa Nock, and they had a son and two daughters. In 1904 they lodged at 15 Pittville Villas (now 38 Prestbury Road), and from 1905 until 1909 at 40 Clarence Square. He once recalled that during his first week as curate in Cheltenham he buried twenty-six people.

After his work in the centre of Cheltenham, he moved out to become Rector of nearby Elkstone, Gloucestershire, where he remained until 1937; while at Elkstone he spent a brief period as a patient at the Cotswold Asylum at Cranham, near Stroud, in 1911, and also wrote a parish history, published in Cheltenham as Elkstone: its manors, church and registers (1919). He developed other hobbies at Elkstone, too, and was a keen bee-keeper and “a pioneer of wireless reception”.

After almost thirty years in Cheltenham he found that his health was failing, and he retired to Brixham in Devon. Tonkinson died in 1941 at Brixham, at the age of seventy-two.

▶Moved to Pittville from:        Moved from Pittville to:

▶Date of death: 1 February 1941       Place of death: Brixham

▶Date of burial:         Place of burial:

▶Notes:  Greenock Telegraph 10 December 1909; Cheltenham Chronicle  8 February 1841     ID: 15194

Contributor(s):  John Simpson/Alan Munden