▶Date of birth:  1Q 1863        Place of birth: Manchester

▶Father:   Joseph Smith    Mother: Harriet Drake Davey

▶Spouse(s):  Katharine Elizabeth Powell    Date(s) of marriage:  3Q 1896     Place(s) of marriage: Market Drayton, Shropshire

▶Occupation: Merchant’s apprentice; Clergyman (Baptist minister, Congregationalist minister)

▶Lifestory: The Revd. Philip Henry Smith began his life in the Church as a Baptist, but in later life he took over several Congregational churches, including the Highbury Church in Cheltenham. He was the fifth son of Joseph Smith, of Selly Oak, Birmingham, manager of a metal works in Northfield, Worcestershire and Deacon and Secretary of Harborne Baptist Church, and his wife Harriet Drake (née Davey). Smith was brought up at Northfield, and educated at the Bradford Villa grammar school.

He wished to join the ministry directly from school, but his grandfather, the Revd. Thomas Davey, of Gravesend, recommended that he should gain experience in business. So, by the age of eighteen, in 1881, he was apprenticed to a local  merchant near Birmingham, gradually working his way up to becoming head of his department. At the same time he was admitted as a Member of Harborne Baptist Church and served as organist and choir-leader, and well as holding classes for working men. In 1889, still living at home, he became a theological student; he studied at the Baptist Rawdon College, Leeds from at least 1890 and travelled around the north and the Midlands speaking and preaching at nonconformist events.

His tutor at Rawdon College spoke highly of Smith to his friends in Northampton, and in 1894 Smith was invited by the College Street Baptist Church in Northampton to leave Rawdon College in order to become their Pastor, though a minority did not “consider him ‘sound’ on the Temperance question”; throughout his career he was involved in the issue of the possible union of the Baptist and Congregational churches. In 1896 he married Katharine Elizabeth, daughter of Alderman T. P. Powell, of Wollerton, Shropshire. He continued to lead his Church in College Street actively, as well as other organisations associated with the Church.

In 1900 he became unwell, and had to give up his clerical duties and move away from Northampton for the sake of his health; he was welcomed back enthusiastically later in the year. He resumed his duties, and in 1903 was elected President of the Northamptonshire Baptist Association, after a split vote. He joined the ranks of the clergymen who engaged in passive resistance against the Poor Rate in 1905, attending court to explain why he had withheld a part of the payment due from him. The Revd. Smith suffered ill health again in 1907, when he had to stay in Matlock, returning in Northampton after many weeks’ absence, but still looking poorly.

But in early 1908 he resigned his office after fourteen years’ devoted service, and prepared to leave Northampton. He remained until 1909, as it happened, when he accepted the pastorate of the much smaller Boscombe Baptist Church, then in Hampshire. A Bournemouth journalist indicated that “he would greatly increase his usefulness if he would make his Church in this district a Union Church and not insist upon making them all “go into” and “out of” the water, like ducks.” He remained in Boscombe until 1912, when he left to the great regret of many of his congregation; he anticipated that he intended “only taking occasional preaching engagements in the future”. He stayed in the Bournemouth area for several years, assisting amongst the Free Churches of the district and in 1916 becoming Pastor of Pokesdown Congregational Church in Bournemouth. At Bournemouth, as elsewhere, he was a great music-lover and ran the Pokesdown choir as its Choirmaster; aside from music he was “a man of striking personality, broad views, and wide outlook”.

From Pokesdown he moved to become the Pastor of Highbury Congregational Church in Cheltenham; between 1921 and 1925 he lived at Selkirk House (now 73 Prestbury Road). While in Cheltenham he remained actively involved in all aspects of church business, including its music, but by 1925 the prolonged ill health of his wife meant that he had to resign in order to change “to a more bracing climate” and he “accepted a call to the pastorate of Union Congregational Church, Portishead,” near Bristol.

Sadly he lived only until November 1926, residing latterly at Spring Cottage, West Hill, Portishead, before dying at St Brenda’s Hospital, Clifton, Bristol. His estate at death was valued at just under £1,710 for probate.

▶Moved to Pittville from:   Bournemouth     Moved from Pittville to: Portishead, Bristol

▶Date of death:   4 November 1926     Place of death: St Brenda’s Hospital, Clifton, Bristol

▶Date of burial:  8 November 1926       Place of burial: Union Congregational Church, Portishead

▶Notes: John Taylor, History of College Street Church, Northampton: With biographies of pastors (1897); Bournemouth Graphic 15 April 1909; Gloucestershire Echo 1 July 1921; Cheltenham Chronicle  4 July 1925       ID: 16396

Contributor(s):  John Simpson