GWYNNE (FAMILY) of Kilvey, Swansea.

RICHARD GWYNNE (1822 - 1907), schoolmaster;

Born Swansea 18 March 1822. He began his career as a compositor but in 1841 trained as a teacher at Grays Inn Road Model School and Norwood. The same year he began to teach at Kilvey (Infants) Copperwork School. He subsequently became the headmaster of the Kilvey Copperwork Schools and remained in that post until 1892. Under his headship the Junior School roll increased from under 40 to over 600 and the Kilvey Schools were consistently spoken of by the Inspectors as the best in the Swansea area. He was a keen student of geology and history and was for forty years vice-president of the Royal Institution of South Wales. In 1857 he married Charlotte Lloyd (1825 - 1908), at one time the school-mistress of Kilvey. They had five sons and a daughter. When his friends applied for a pension for him in 1891 they pointed out that he had spent all his savings educating his sons. He died at Langland, 28 November 1907, and was buried in Oystermouth cemetery.

Two sons achieved national fame:

Rt. Rev. LLEWELLYN HENRY GWYNNE (1863 - 1957), bishop,

C.M.G. 1917; C.B.E. 1919; D.D. Glasgow 1919; LL.D. Cambridge, 1920; born Kilvey, 11 June 1863. Educated at Swansea Grammar School and St. John's Hall, Highbury. Curate of St. Chad's, Derby, 1886-89, and St. Andrew's, Nottingham, 1889-92. While at Derby he played for Derby County Football Club, the only amateur in the team. Vicar of Emmanuel, Nottingham, 1892-99. In the latter year he went as a missionary to the Sudan, working for the C.M.S. In 1908 he became the first suffragan Bishop of Khartoum, then part of the diocese of Jerusalem. When World War I broke out he went to France as a volunteer chaplain and was appointed Deputy Chaplain General there in August 1915. He was frequently in the front line. One of his assistants, Dr. F.R. Barry, later Bishop of Southwell, describes him as a saint but adds, 'Yet in all my life I have never encountered anybody less like a saint in painted windows. A burly man, and a Welsh footballer, he was every inch masculine, a man's man.' After the war he could have had many preferments but he chose to return to the Sudan. When the diocese of Jerusalem was divided in 1920 he became the first Anglican Bishop of Egypt and the Sudan. He continued his work there until he was over eighty, finally retiring in 1946. He was responsible for the building of the Anglican cathedrals in Cairo and Khartoum and ministered to the 8th Army during World War II. He preached in Swansea in the 1950s. He died 3 December 1957.

HOWELL ARTHUR GWYNNE (1865 - 1950), journalist,

C.H. 1938; born Kilvey, 3 September 1865. Educated at Swansea Grammar School (Foundation Scholar) and in Switzerland. He was The Times ' correspondent in the Balkans in the early 1890s. From 1893 to 1904 he was a special correspondent for Reuter's Agency. Whilst in their service he went to Ashanti in 1895, accompanied Kitchener's expedition to Dongola in 1896, reported the Turko-Greek war of 1897 and Kitchener's expedition to Berber of the same year, and was in Peking at the beginning of the Boxer troubles from January 1898 to May 1899. He was responsible for organising Reuter's services in South Africa during the Boer way. Immediately after the war he returned to South Africa with Joseph Chamberlain, who became a close friend. In 1904 he was briefly foreign director of Reuter's before becoming editor of the Standard from 1904 to 1911. He was then editor of the Morning Post until its merger with the Daily Telegraph in 1937. He was vehement in asserting the editorial independence of the Morning Post although he took a strong Tory line on foreign policy, the army and the empire. His personal friendships with Chamberlain, Kitchener, Sir Edward Carson, Haig, Kipling, Alfred Milner and others gave him a certain behind-the-scenes influence. The Times spoke of him as 'a talented Welshman' who was 'a little incongruous amid the sober compromises of the English political scene.' He published The Army on Itself (1904), and The Will and the Bill (1923), the latter a political satire. He married Edith Douglas, daughter of Thomas Ash Lane, in 1907. There were no children. He died 26 June 1950.

Two other sons also became clergymen:

RICHARD LLOYD GWYNNE (1859 - 1941);

born Kilvey, February 1859; educated Swansea Grammar School and London College of Divinity; curate of Barrow, Cheshire, 1882-85, Winsley, Wiltshire, 1885-86 and St. John, Tunbridge Wells, 1891-1909, rector of Little Easton in the diocese of Chelmsford, 1915-37.

CHARLES BROOKE GWYNNE (1861 - 1944);

born Kilvey, July 1861; educated at Swansea Grammar School and Christ College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. 1884 and M.A. 1888. He was curate of Timperley, 1885-88 and Christ Church, Claughton, 1888-90; vicar of Holy Trinity with St. Matthews, Birkenhead, 1891-96, Bollington, 1896-1909, Neston, 1909-20, and rector of West Kirby, 1920-32. He was an honorary canon of Chester 1919-34 and canon emeritus thereafter. He was vicar of Wendover Ambo, near Saffron Walden, 1932-33. He was a proctor in Convocation and published Criticisms on the Consecration Prayer in the New Prayer Book (1931).

Published date: 2001