▶Date of birth:  8 February 1859        Place of birth:  Lucknow, India

▶Father:   William Townshend Storrs      Mother:   Annie M. M. Eardley

▶Spouse(s):  Grace Emily Rae      Date(s) of marriage:  19 February 1884     Place(s) of marriage: All Saints’ Church, Cheltenham

▶Occupation: Clergyman (Anglican), Missionary

▶Lifestory: The Revd. Robert Augustine Storrs was started his clerical work in Cheltenham before marrying and heading back India as a missionary for twenty years. He had been born in Lucknow, India, in 1859, the eldest son of the Revd. William Townsend Storrs, then a missionary at Lucknow, and his wife Sarah, third daughter of George Coopland, Rector of St Margaret’s Church, York. Storrs was educated at Bradford grammar school and at the Church Missionary Children’s Home for the children of missionaries at Islington in London, before he matriculated at St John’s College, Cambridge in 1878, BA 1882.

He took holy orders and was ordained Deacon in 1882, and Priest (both Gloucester and Bristol) 1883. In 1882 he was licensed Curate to Holy Trinity Church in Cheltenham, where between 1883 and 1884 he lived at 1 Selkirk Parade (now 71 Prestbury Road). He engaged with the religious life of the town, attending, for example, a meeting of the Cheltenham Association for Rescue Work and Social Purity in 1883. In 1884 he married Grace Emily, eldest daughter of William Maples Rae Esq., of Berkeley Villas, Pittville, Cheltenham; they had one daughter.

Soon after the wedding the couple sailed for India, where Storrs had been appointed to a Chaplaincy in Lahore. His missionary work took him to various regions of India: he was a Chaplain to the Railway in Rawalpindi 1884-7, at Jullundur 1887, Nowshera 1887-8, Quetta 1888-93 (also at Sealkot 1887-9 and Muree 1887-8), before his postings to Multan 1893-5 (where on one occasion he had to escape from a church through the Vestry during a severe earthquake), Karachi 1895-6, Dalhousie 1898-1900, and Peshawar 1900-1.

After twenty years on the missionary trail as an Army Chaplain in India he returned to England, where he became Vicar of Yorktown with Camberley, Surrey 1907-21, and finally moved to the Isle of Wight, where he served as Rector of Shanklin 1921-37; in 1932 he posted a notice at the parish church of St Blasius, warning people through a quotation from Deuteronomy not to wear beach pyjamas. Storrs retired from the rectory in 1937, and died at Sandown, on the Isle of Wight, in 1941, at the age of eighty-two.

▶Moved to Pittville from:   Cambridge     Moved from Pittville to: Lahore

▶Date of death:   8 July 1941     Place of death: Sandown, Isle of Wight

▶Date of burial:         Place of burial:

▶Notes:        ID: 8237

Contributor(s):  John Simpson