Sabine Baring-Gould

1834-1924

Born: January 28, 1834, Exeter, England.

Died: January 2, 1924, Lew Trenchard, Devonshire, England.

Buried: In the churchyard across the road from his home at Lew Trenchard.

Baring-Gould had one of the most brilliant, eclectic minds of Victorian England. Born into the landed gentry, he attended schools in Germany and France, then went to Clare College at Cambridge. He learned six languages, entered the ministry at age 30, and pastored in Yorkshire, Essex, and Devonshire.

Baring Gould was born in Exeter in 1834 to a father whose career with the East India Company had been cut short by a carriage accident. His childhood was unsettled since his father preferred to escape the boredom of England by travelling through Europe for the greater part of the year. This meant that Baring Gould had little formal schooling but this did not prevent him from scraping through Cambridge, though he could never get to grips with mathematics. His unconventional views and behaviour were obvious even then and he was a persistent critic of the establishment (particularly that of the church) throughout his life.

Tales of his eccentricity abound and it is well documented that he taught at Hurstpierpoint with his pet bat on his shoulder. Another of his admirers, John Betjeman, said of him "What curate in an industrial parish in the North today would dare to single out a millgirl and have her sent to a place where she could learn to speak in an educated style and then marry her? What local council would allow a squire today to rebuild his house in a Rhenish style as did Baring Gould in Lewtrenchard? What vicar and Diocesan Advisory Committee would allow a squarson to remove tablets from other churches and put them up in his own, as Baring Gould did at Lew?"

Yet for the greater part of his life Baring Gould was content to settle in Devon where he was responsible for the welfare of the few hundred people that lived in his parish and his manor. This left him time to spare for travelling regularly as he had when he was a boy, for raising his large family, for renovating his house and his church and for writing the astonishing number of books, pamphlets and magazine articles that actually paid for these other activities.

No totally reliable list of his publications exists but the best available estimate credits him with 211 publications excluding any of the magazine articles. To most people who have heard his name it is as the writer of a favourite hymn - probably "Onward Christian Soldiers", but of all the achievements of his 90 years on this Earth, he himself rated most highly that of collecting the folk songs which were published as "Songs of the West".

His books included 30 novels and a mammoth 16-volume Lives of the Saints. His works cover a huge range of topics: theology, folklore, social commentary, travel & history. One account of his life states, "At one point there were more books listed under his name in the British Museum Library than under that of any other English writer." But he was not just an author: he was an archaeologist, architect, artist, teacher and a collector of English folk songs. His family estate at Lew Trenchard, near Dartmoor in Devonshire, is now a hotel.

Baring Gould died in 1924 at Lewtrenchard and was buried in his own churchyard just across the road from his house. In West Devon there are still old people who remember him and most of those do so fondly. To Folk Revival singers in Devon and Cornwall he has left a legacy that will be a source of joy for centuries to come.