▶Date of birth:  (baptised) 30 November 1776        Place of birth: Esher, Surrey

▶Father:  Edmund Gardiner     Mother: Mary Chitty

▶Spouse(s):  (1) Frances Ann Snow; (2) Georgiana Trevor Rodney Burton-Phillipson    Date(s) of marriage: (1) 27 December 1810; (2) 28 July 1831     Place(s) of marriage: (1) St Martin’s, Birmingham; (2) St Dunstan’s, Stepney

▶Occupation: Clergyman (Anglican)

▶Lifestory: After obtaining a Fellowship at Lincoln College, Oxford, Frederick Gardiner spent over fifty years as Rector of Combe Hay in Somerset, though he remained an absentee vicar for much of this time. He was baptised in 1776 at Esher in Surrey, the son of the Revd. Edmund Gardiner, Rector of Tintern Parva, Monmouthshire, and his wife Mary (née Chitty). Gardiner matriculated at Balliol College, Oxford in 1794, though he is not recorded as taking a degree. He was ordained Deacon in 1799, and Priest (both Salisbury) in 1800.

In 1799 he was licensed Curate of Hardenhuish in Wiltshire, and two years later he was both appointed Domestic Chaplain to Edward Harvey-Hawke, 3rd Baron Hawke, and was installed as Vicar of Wellow in Somerset, where he remained until he was presented with the rectory of Combe Hay in Somerset in 1806 (he was also awarded the degree of MA by Lambeth Palace this year); he remained Rector of Combe Hay for fifty-one years, until his death. In 1807 he migrated to Lincoln College, Oxford where he obtained a Fellowship.

He married Frances Ann, eldest daughter of Joseph Snow Esq., of Banbury in 1810; the couple had at least two daughters. After the death of his wife, in 1831 he married again, to Georgiana Trevor Rodney Burton Phillipson, at St Dunstan’s, Stepney in London; they had a son. Gardiner seems to have absented himself from Combe Hay for much of his ministry. In 1841 he is recorded as living in Paragon Parade, Cheltenham with his wife Georgiana, and his daughters Georgiana Phillipson and Emily; in 1843 his daughter Georgiana was married by the Revd. Francis Close to Captain Henry Swan Waters, of the Madras Cavalry, at St Mary’s Church in Cheltenham. Between 1842 and 1844 he is listed as living at 9 Pittville Parade (now 50 Prestbury Road) in Pittville. In 1851, still Rector of Combe Hay, he lived in Charlotte Street in London.

Gardiner lived latterly in London at 10 Bedford Street, St Giles-in-the-Fields, and died in London in 1857, at the age of eighty; he was buried four days later at All Souls cemetery, Kensal Green in London, where his wife joined him eighteen months later.

▶Moved to Pittville from: (uncertain)     Moved from Pittville to: (uncertain)

▶Date of death: 14 July 1857       Place of death: London

▶Date of burial:  18 July 1857      Place of burial: All Souls’ cemetery, Kensal Green

▶Notes:        ID: 8312

Contributor(s):  John Simpson