▶Date of birth:  6 October 1837        Place of birth:  Edinburgh, Scotland

▶Father: Captain John Gratton Guinness, East India Company Service    Mother: Jane Mary Lucretia Cramer, daughter of William Cramer, and widow of Captain John D’Esterre (killed in a duel by Daniel O’Connell in 1815)

▶Spouse(s): Sarah Victoria Dora Boxwell    Date(s) of marriage:  2 October 1872     Place(s) of marriage: British Embassy, Stuttgart, Germany

▶Occupation: Clergyman (Anglican)

▶Lifestory: The Revd. Robert Wyndham Guinness was a younger brother of the celebrated Irish Protestant evangelist Henry Grattan Guinness, and nephew of the brewer Arthur Guinness. Born in Edinburgh, he lived with his younger brother Frederic and recently widowed mother Jane Guinness at 13 Clarence Square, Cheltenham in 1851. He was a student at New College, St John’s Wood 1857-8, and soon developed something of a reputation as a preacher. He mentioned in a sermon at the time that he had narrowly avoided drowning while swimming with his brother, the Revd. Henry Grattan Guinness, at Castlerock, Londonderry (both brothers had been attracted to the sea as a profession before turning to the Church). Though not so athletically built as his brother, Robert was youthful-looking, with a trace of a moustache, and graceful in his actions and delivery.

He matriculated at St John’s College, Cambridge in 1860, BA (second class in Natural Science tripos) 1863, MA 1866; between about 1861 and 1867 he lived with his mother at 1 Wellington Square, while he was a student at Cambridge. He was ordained Deacon in 1863, and Priest (both Gloucester and Bristol) in 1864. Between 1863 and 1864 he served as Curate of St James, Bristol and Chaplain to the Bristol Penitentiary before moving to Cheltenham as Curate of St Mary’s 1864-7, where he was the first clergyman to officiate at a burial at the New Cemetery. He resigned from his post in Cheltenham as a result of being “inhibited by the Rector, the Rev. Dr. Edward Walker, from preaching extempore sermons” (though his congregation welcomed him eagerly when he visited Cheltenham later in the year). He went then as Curate-in-charge of nearby Guiting Power with Farmoote 1867-8.

In 1867 he moved to Paddington as Curate of Holy Trinity, until 1868, when he was appointed Curate-in-charge of St Paul’s temporary church, in Paddington until 1870. His round of clerical appointments continued as Perpetual Curate of St James’s, West Hartlepool 1870-1, and Curate of Clontarf, Dublin 1871-4 (in the census of 1871 he is recorded, a clergyman of the “Irish Church”, aged 33, as a visitor at Wellington Lodge, Wellington Square, Pittville). In 1872, in Stuttgart, Germany, he married Dublin citizen Sarah Victoria Dora, youngest daughter of William Boxwell MD, of Abbeyleix, Co. Laios.

Finally he settled as  Rector of Rathdrum, Co. Wicklow 1874 until his death in 1919 at the Rathdrum Rectory, at the age of eighty-one. Over much the same period he served as Rural Dean (1876-1919).

▶Moved to Pittville from: Bristol   Moved from Pittville to: Guiting Power

▶Date of death: 18 February 1919     Place of death: The Rectory, Rathdrum, Co. Wicklow

▶Date of burial:         Place of burial:

▶Notes: Cambridge Independent Press 16 March 1867; Henry Seymour Guinness, The Guinness family (1954)                ID: 4208

Contributor(s):  Alan Munden/John Simpson