▶Date of birth:   1792       Place of birth: Hereford, Herefordshire

▶Father:  John Evans     Mother: Mary Campbell

▶Spouse(s): Anna Maria Bowle       Date(s) of marriage: 1 February 1832     Place(s) of marriage: St Edmund’s Church, Salisbury

▶Occupation: Clergyman (Anglican)

▶Lifestory: The Revd. Francis Evans was ordained but did not have a clerical office; he was a man of some wealth. Evans was born in Hereford in 1792, the eldest son and heir of John Evans, of The Byletts, Pembridge, Herefordshire, and his wife Mary, daughter of Francis Campbell MD, of Hereford. In 1811 he matriculated at St John’s College, Cambridge, Scholar, BA 1815, MA 1819. He took holy orders and was ordained Deacon (Peterborough) 1817, and Priest (Salisbury) in 1819.

Evans succeeded his father in 1824, acquiring the family house, The Byletts, and lived affluently. From at least 1830 he was a frequent visitor to Cheltenham, sometimes staying in the town’s main hotels and at other times leasing property for short periods. In 1832 he married Anna Marie, eldest daughter of the Revd. John Bowle, of Salisbury; the couple had three sons and three daughters. Between 1830 and 1839 Evans stayed in Cheltenham at least five times, at the new Queen’s Hotel (sometimes with his wife). He became a Magistrate for Herefordshire.

At the time of the 1851 census he lived with his family at 10 The Crescent, Melcombe Regis, Weymouth, Dorset, a clergyman without cure of souls; later that year he stayed briefly at the George Hotel in Cheltenham. Between 1855 and 1856 the household lived at Segrave House (now 2 Pittville Lawn), returning to Weymouth in 1856. But by 1859 he and his family were living at 20 Lansdown Place in Cheltenham, where he remained for several years; at this time the Cheltenham Examiner referred to him as “a clergyman of fortune living in this town”. His son John married in 1863, at Evesham House, Pittville, the residence of his father-in-law, in Cheltenham, to Isabella Sophia, daughter of Charles Lloyd Harford Esq.

Evans died at his home in Cheltenham in 1868, at the age of seventy-six.

▶Moved to Pittville from:  (1) Weymouth; (2) Cheltenham     Moved from Pittville to: (1) Weymouth; (2) Cheltenham

▶Date of death:  22 January 1868      Place of death:  20 Lansdown Place, Cheltenham

▶Date of burial:         Place of burial:

▶Notes:  Cheltenham Examiner 15 August 1860      ID: 814

Contributor(s):  John Simpson