Gerard Collier is remembered in St Hilary’s Church, near Marazion, by a poignant reredos memorial in the Chapel of All Souls, created and designed by his friend and Newlyn artist Ernest Procter. His chest tomb just inside the new cemetery is Grade II listed. He was a great friend of Father Bernard Walke, the charismatic and controversial Vicar of St Hilary , working closely with him in the immediate post WW1 years. This is the story of how Gerard came to be buried in St Hilary and an account of his brief years in Marazion and Penzance until his untimely death aged 43.
Reredos Memorial
Gerard’s background was that of the privileged strata of society, the second son of Lord Monkswell, a Liberal Peer. The Collier family were eminent Plymouth wine merchants who were well established by the eighteenth century; a blue plaque on the Barbican records their town house. His great grandfather, John Collier (1769-1886) was one of the two MPs (Liberal) elected for Plymouth following the Great Reform Act of 1832. A stone memorial was erected on the Hoe to commemorate this event. In the early 1980s this memorial stone was re-erected in the former Plymouth Dome nearby.
Collier Memorial
Blue Plaque in South Street, Plymouth Barbican
Gerard’s grandfather, Robert Porrett Collier (1817-1886) did not initially follow his father into politics but pursued a career in Law. He made his name winning a controversial case heard in Exeter defending some Brazilian pirates, taking the case to the Home Secretary and winning. In 1848 he was made Recorder of Penzance, and then had an upward career being created a Peer, Lord Monkswell, in 1885, taking the name from a family home near Horrabridge, Devon and culminating in being appointed Attorney General in 1886. Gerard’s father, also Robert, was his eldest son and his second son John Collier RA was the well-known artist and portrait painter.
Gerard was born in 1878, went to Eton and then to Balliol College, Oxford (1898). Bernard Walke records in his book ‘Twenty Years at St Hilary’ that it was at Eton that ‘he was awakened to a sense of responsibility for the welfare of his fellows…’ When at Oxford he became involved with many of the movements emerging at the time looking at ways to bring about social change, education and equality.
His associates included: R H Tawney, leading figure of the Workers Educational Association (WEA), William Temple – future Archbishop of Canterbury and William Beveridge – whose 1942 report was pivotal in the establishment of the Welfare State.
After gaining a first class degree at Oxford Gerard and his younger brother Eric went on a world tour which included a visit to the fire walking festival in Japan and to Saghalien, a penal colony off the coast of Russia, a dangerous place where they had to travel with loaded guns for protection. Returning via Australia, he lectured for a short time at Sydney University. He took a post at the Mercers School in London and also kept up his links with the WEA.
A Very Special Adventure: An Illustrated History of the WEA: 1903-2003
Gerard is top row 2nd in from the left.
In 1910 he married Lily Grant Duff and moved to Birmingham University and set up the first Workers Educational Association at the University. This was crucial in developing access to further education for the then working classes. He was a favourite tutor of Lavena Saltonstall, suffragette and cloth cutter from Hebden Bridge, who in her ‘Letters of a Tailoress’, printed in the WEA’s newsletter (1911) railed bitterly about the lot of women of her generation and class: ‘Should any girl show a tendency to politics or ideas of her own, she is looked upon by the majority of women as a person who neglects doorsteps and home matters . . . if their daughter shows any signs of a craving for higher things than cleaning brass fenders or bath taps, they put a stop to what they call ‘‘high notions’’. She wrote of Gerard: ‘I never thought a lord’s son could be so sensible or charming’.
However with the outbreak of the First World War Gerard became a Conscientious Objector and was closely associated with the Peace Movement of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. This caused a big rift within his family. His elder brother, Robert, writes in 1915 from war service in France ‘I regret to say Gerard has been behaving so oddly lately... He has got some sort of absurd idea that it is wrong to fight before we have invited the Germans, as a nation, to hold some sort of combined prayer meeting with us for the purpose of asking Our Lord to settle our differences.’ He requests the recipient of the letter to ‘Please keep as quiet as possible about Gerard’. He also mentions in another letter of 1916 that ‘Gerard is very ill indeed, nervous exhaustion brought on by worry .. and is in the hands of doctors and dentists’.
In 1919 after end of the war Gerard and his family moved to Marazion for health reasons. A letter from Gerard written on 7th April 1920 has the address: Gothic Cottage, Marazion and mentions that ‘Our house is gradually rising on its amazing site.’ This is St Anthony’s House at the east end of Marazion near the cemetery. It is likely that they organised one end of the house to be used as a soup kitchen for the poor of the parish. Indeed an inhabitant of Marazion told me that up until a few years ago tramps would visit in the hope it was still operating. Their move is also recorded in The Society of Friends Minute book of 1919 under the Marazion section: ‘It is unofficially reported from Birmingham that Lily Collier (a member) has settled here. Friends are asked to make her acquaintance. Her husband is a non-member’.
St Anthony’s House, Marazion
Very soon after arriving they made friends with Ernest and Dod Procter, who were also members of the Friends at Marazion and also Father Bernard Walke, who writes in ‘Twenty Years at St Hilary’ ‘one of the events of greatest significance for us in the year immediately following the end of the war was the coming of Gerard Collier to live in our neighbourhood.’
He was also still closely involved with the Fellowship of Reconciliation and in 1919 attended their first International Conference held at Bilthoven, Netherlands. Gerard, tall in the back row on the left, two up from the man with the bushy beard!
First International Conference held at Bilthoven, Netherlands
He and Lily were also much concerned with the starvation prevailing in Russia and the part England had played in the blockade. In Bernard Walke’s book ‘Twenty Years at St Hilary‘ there is a description of Gerard walking in Penzance with sandwich boards advertising ‘Come to St John’s Hall to-night and help to save Russia’. This was not a popular cause but Bernard Walke records ‘wherever I went I met this figure, who turned very courteously so that the crowd that followed him might read the notice he carried. It was Gerard’s act of reparation for our share in the starvation of a people’.
Lily was active in organising collections for Russia and regularly advertised in ‘The Cornishman’, May 17 – June 14 1922. These activities attracted criticism and gave rise to rumours that the Colliers were communists.
‘The Cornishman’, May 17 – June 14 1922
Gerard continued to work as a WEA Tutor in West Cornwall and delivered courses in Redruth and Camborne. There is an account in the Cornishman in July 1921 of a visit to Falmouth by the Camborne WEA which gives his very clear view of the purpose and aims of the WEA:
‘through the kind permission of Mr Howard Fox, the party visited Rosehill Gardens, where tea was provided.’
The Hon. G Collier. M.A., then gave a delightful address on the, ‘Message of the W.E.A.’ He said the Workers' Educational Association desired to bring the scholar and the worker into closer contact with each other; it aimed at a kind of fellowship, for as learning had much to give to labour, so also had the worker who was of necessity in touch with the practical things of life much to impart to the 'learned’! Mr. Collier gave a charming description of the life at the University of Oxford, and said that ‘though it was impossible at present to go to University, it was the aim of the W E.A. to bring to the workers as much of the higher education as possible.’
At the end of the War the mining industry in Cornwall collapsed and there was chronic unemployment and poverty in Cornwall. Over 2,000 miners were out of work and descriptions of the conditions and hardship were regularly reported in the local press.
Gerard Collier, together with Bernard Walke, Bishop Warman, Tom Attlee, brother of Clement Attlee, some prominent Quakers and leaders of other churches formed an organisation called the Industrial Council of the Church. This organisation purchased a disused mine at Scorrier and on 6 June 1922 over 50 miners from Redruth attended a dedication service. They used a ring to symbolize this venture as a marriage of men to industry and vowed to work for the glory of God and for their fellow men. However at the same time the Government announced a major road building scheme to relieve unemployment so the funding for the re-opening of the mine was not forthcoming and the scheme collapsed.
Then suddenly on 23 April 1923 Gerard died. It was totally unexpected and a great shock. At Easter he had attended a Conference for the Fellowship of Reconciliation in the Netherlands and on his return had flu. He seemed to recover only to relapse and die of a form of muscular paralysis. Bernard Walke wrote ‘A friendship such as we had never known before had gone from us’.
Announcement in Cornishman 2nd May 1923
Obituary - The Cornishman 2 May 1923
‘The late Mr. Collier was an educationist of high order, his special theme being economics and history, having secured for the latter a first class at Oxford. In earlier days he was an amateur mountaineer, and had climbed many of the most difficult peaks of the Swiss mountains. He was deeply interested in religion and had often spoken at the Friends meeting at Marazion. Last year he delivered a series of addresses in St. Hilary Church, and took his stand with the vicar of St. Hilary at open air meetings, for the promotion of peace and union, at Goldsithney, and at various points in the parish of St. Hilary. He will be much missed by the poor, for he was their ready helper, and the much good he has done for various families will never be known by the man in the street.’
HON. GERARD COLLIER. IMPRESSIVE FUNERAL AT ST. HILARY.
‘The funeral of the Hon, Gerard Collier, second son of the Baron Monkswell, and brother and heir-presumptive to the present holder of the title, who died at St. Anthony's, Marazion, last week, took place at St. Hilary Church yesterday. After evensong Sunday the body was conveyed from St. Anthony's to the church and rested in the nave, and vespers of the dead were said in the presence of a large congregation. A mourning requiem mass was said by Rev. C. Fursdon Rogers, of Goldsithney (formerly vicar of St. Mary's, Penzance), and a solemn requiem mass was sung by Rev. N. Bernard Walke (vicar of St. Hilary). At the internment Revs. N. Bernard Walke and C Fursdon Rogers officiated. As the procession passed from the church to the grave in the new ground "Safe in the arms of Jesus " was rendered. The principal mourners were Hon. Mrs. Gerard Collier widow; Master Percy Collier, son; the Lady Monkswell, mother; Baron Monkswell and the Hon. Eric Collier, brothers ….’
Western Morning News 2 May 1923
A memorial service was also held at the Meeting House in Marazion. Reported in ‘The Cornishman’, 9 May 1923.
Gerard is buried in the new cemetery at St Hilary. His grave is just inside the gate and is Grade 11 listed.
Soon after his death it was decided to erect a memorial in St Hilary Church (Cornishman 19 September 1923) which was erected a year later.
The Cornishman 19 Sept 1923
The Cornishman April 30 1924
Below is a postcard taken before 1932 showing the memorial flanked by the prayer boards and the stone altar before it. This was one of the items that was attacked during the raid on the Church on 8th August 1932 by the Kensities. The granite edifice and cross above the memorial was discovered a few years ago lying in the churchyard and it was only on seeing a picture of the memorial before the raid was it realised where these stones belonged.
The Collier Memorial in the Chapel of All Souls as it is today
Detail of the Deposition by Ernest Procter
The inscription translated from the Latin reads:
His Friends erected this tablet to the sacred memory of Gerard Collier
Interestingly there is a mistake in the date; MDMXXIII it is not a correct date,
it should read MCMXXIII (1923)
References:
Twenty Years at St Hilary 1935 – Father Bernard Walke
A Very Special Adventure – The illustrated History of the Workers Educational Association 2003
The Society of Friends – Cornwall Section: Marazion. Kresen Kernow
A Victorian Diarist – Lady Monkswell edited by the Hon E C F Collier
Personal Family letters and photographs.
International Fellowship of Reconciliation
Penwith Local History Group
Edited by
Sally Corbet
price £10
plus p&p