▶Date of birth:  5 August 1802        Place of birth:  Cowes, Isle of Wight

▶Father: Henry Dison Gabell DD, of Cowes, Isle of Wight     Mother: Ann Gage

▶Spouse(s): Ellen (also Ellinor), widow of William Powell, solicitor, of Abergavenny   Date(s) of marriage:  20 July 1853     Place(s) of marriage: Abergavenny, Monmouthshire

▶Occupation: Clergyman

▶Lifestory: James Henry Leigh Gabell was the third son of Henry Dyson Gabell and his wife Ann; he was baptised at Winchester College on 12 April 1803. James attended Winchester College as a Commoner in 1816, moving into the College in 1817. He matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford in 1821, BA 1826. MA 1831. His father Henry Dison Gabell was Headmaster of Winchester College 1810-23, and Rector of Ashow 1812-31 (see ODNB). He was ordained Deacon (Hereford) in 1826. He was apparently licensed Curate of Ashow, Warwick from 1818, where his father was Rector until his death in 1831. In 1842 he published The accordance of religion with nature.

From about 1851 he lived at 8 Lansdown Crescent with his sisters, and after the death of his sister Susanna in 1851, and the illness of another (his sister Lucy died the following year in Germany), he left Cheltenham for a while. After his marriage in 1853 he returned to live in Cheltenham. By the time of the 1861 census he stated himself a clergyman “without curacy”, and appears as such in later censuses. In 1867 he bought Corinthian House (3 Sandford Place) from the bankrupt Count Metaxa, and was living there with his wife at the time of the 1871 census.

But soon after the death of his wife in 1873 he removed to Anlaby House, on Evesham Road, Pittville, where he lived in the household of his cousin Arthur Richard Gabell from 1874 until his death in 1884, at the age of eighty-one. In 1874 he appears as a Committee Member of Board of the Cheltenham Industrial School, in Baker Street. He was known as a generous benefactor to the General Hospital and the Fever Block at the Delancey Hospital in Charlton Lane, to which he donated £10,000 (see the article from the Cheltenham Examiner below). His wealth at death was sworn at over £96,400.

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Cheltenham Examiner 20 February 1884

The Late Rev. J. H. L. GABELL

— A correspondent writes, with reference to our notice of this gentleman, as follows: "You have not dated the coming to Cheltenham of this benefactor of the town sufficiently far back. Upwards of thirty-three years ago, when the Francis Close and the Rev. Archibald Boyd were in the zenith of their fame, he resided with his sisters in Lansdown-crescent. One of his sisters died and illness attacked another, and then Mr. Gabell tried the effect of travel, and was away from Cheltenham for some years. Having in the meantime, married he returned to reside in [3] Sandford-place, whence he moved, on the death of his wife, to Anlaby House. His generous gifts to the Fever Hospital brought him a publicity from which he shrank, and only his strong conviction of the goodness of the object overcame the diffidence with which he allowed his name to appear as the donor of amounts so far in excess of those whom he sought to stimulate by his example."

During his time in Cheltenham he donated over £10,000 to help complete Delancey Hospital. His generosity enabled the Scarlet Fever Block to be built. Once completed it soon became known as the Gabell Block.

Nine months after his death a memorial brass was placed near the entrance to the administrative block of Delancey with the following inscription.

“This tablet was erected by the Trustees of the Delancey Fever Hospital to the memory of the Reverend James Henry Leigh Gabell, M.A., of Anlaby, Cheltenham, clerk in holy orders, who died on the second day of February 1884, and in grateful remembrance of his munificent liberality, in having at various times during his life given sums amounting altogether to nearly £10,000, first for the purchase of the site of the hospital, afterwards towards the cost of the building and furnishing fund of the Small Pox, Scarlet Fever, and Administrative Blocks, the funds to defray the cost of the two later having been provided almost entirely by him in May 1884”

In March 1900 the portrait of the late Rev. J. H. L. Gabell was moved from the Hospital Board-room to the Municipal Art Gallery where it was put on display.

▶Moved to Pittville from: 3 Sandford Place, Bath Road, Cheltenham    Moved from Pittville to: (deceased)

▶Date of death: 2 February 1884     Place of death: Anlaby House, Evesham Road, Pittville

▶Date of burial:  6 February 1884       Place of burial: Funeral service at St Mary’s, Cheltenham, followed by burial at Cheltenham Cemetery.

▶Notes:  Some Gabel family papers in the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust      ID: 3299

Contributor(s):  David Drinkwater/Alan Munden/John Simpson