▶Date of birth:  1782        Place of birth: Sheffield

▶Father:  Thomas Radford     Mother: Elizabeth Gunning

▶Spouse(s):  Elizabeth Stockford        Date(s) of marriage:  31 October 1830       Place(s) of marriage: St George’s, Bloomsbury

▶Occupation: Clergyman (Anglican); Academic

▶Lifestory: John Radford spent much of his life as an Oxford academic who took holy orders and also purchased his interest in science. He was born in 1782 in Sheffield, the second son of the Revd. Thomas Radford, of Attercliff, Yorkshire, and his wife Elizabeth (née Gunning). Radford was educated at King Edward’s School, Birmingham, and matriculated at Lincoln College, Oxford in 1800, BA 1804, MA 1807, BD 1815, DD 1834, Tutor 1822, Sub-Rector 1823, Public Preacher 1824, Rector 1834; he remained a Fellow of the College until 1834, and indeed spent almost all of his adult life there and at his house in the nearby village of Combe. He took holy orders, and in 1804 was ordained Deacon, and the following year Priest (both Oxford).

By 1833 he was a Member of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and in 1834 was also preferred to the rectory of Twyford in Buckinghamshire. In the same year he bought 12 Pittville Parade (now 24 Evesham Road) in Cheltenham, with his relative Charles Gunning, for £1,680; the house was built or almost completed, and the purchase was presumably an investment. Then, in 1836, his Fellowship resigned, he married Elizabeth Stockford, of St Aldate’s, Oxford, in late 1836.

In 1845 he was appointed a Pro-Vice-Chancellor by the University of Oxford, and was admitted ad eundem to the degree of DD by the University of Durham; he was also a Trustee of Lord Crewe’s charity, which distributed money from Lord Crewe’s bequest “for the benefit of necessitous clergy in the ancient Diocese of Durham”.

After the death of his wife (apparently in 1839) he lived “in great retirement”, but he was by disposition “naturally social, and his conversation [was] polished, agreeable, and instructive”. Some of his writings (sermons and correspondence) were printed for his friends, and were not published. Radford died in 1851 at the Rector’s Lodgings at his College in Oxford, at the age of seventy, and was buried at All Saints’ Church, Oxford.

▶Moved to Pittville from: (non-resident)       Moved from Pittville to:

▶Date of death:  21 October 1851      Place of death: Rector’s Lodgings, Lincoln College, Oxford

▶Date of burial:         Place of burial:

▶Notes: Gentleman’s Magazine (1851)       ID: 3990

Contributor(s):  John Simpson/Alan Munden