John Escreet was curate to Robert Eustace for 28 years, living in the Vicarage and, apparently, acting as the effective Vicar for the whole of that period while Eustace occupied himself with this native Great Sampford. After 1905, however, when Eustace was succeeded by Edward Roberts who needed to live in the Village, the Escreet family moved to Firs House. As Hempstead now had a resident Vicar, Escreet retired at the same time.
Born in about 1835 in Keyingham in the East Riding of Yorkshire, John Escreet was married to Lydia. They had two sons, John and Arthur (each born in Yorkshire) and a daughter Lucy who was born after their move to Essex. Arthur was recorded in the 1881 census as an “imbecile from birth”.
Escreet appears to have been a talented and complex character, not without his flashes of tetchiness. The entry below from his 1880 parish register records a “good and diligent try” by Messrs Colman and Myhill to “bully the curate out of his senses, but sufficient to write this note remains”. The following day he tendered his resignation, but three days later there is a brief comment that this has been “declined”
In another extract, he records a confrontation with a man claiming to be the lineal representative of William Harvey who, in defiance of Escreet’s wishes, “rent off by violence a good many of the coffin lids in the Harvey vault that he might obtain the inscriptions from the lead coffins” What seems to have rankled particularly with Escreet was the interloper’s attitude towards him. “He regarded me only as Mt Eustace’s servant here.”
Escreet is best known for two things. First, he was the curate in charge when the church tower collapsed on Saturday 28 January 1882. He had seen it coming: three years earlier he had written to The Lancet (which had published a piece about the Harvey remains) in the following terms:
According to James Bettley, writing in the Essex Journal:
During the preceding week old cracks in the fifteenth century tower of the church had worsened, and new ones appeared. About 4.30 in the afternoon the curate, John Escreet, left the church, gave instructions that the bells were not to be rung and that the clock should not be wound, and sat down to write to the vicar of Great Sampford, R.H. Eustace, to express his concern.
Between 6 and 7 o’clock the south wall of the tower began crumbling away a few feet above the ground, and in less than an hour the whole tower, except a small part of the north wall, slipped down, bringing with it half the nave roof, an arch from the south side of the nave, and a good deal of the roof of the south aisle
There is much more about the tower’s collapse at this section of the website, including Escreet’s own handwritten account of the disaster and its aftermath.
The second thing for which Escreet is chiefly known is his skill as a joiner and woodcarver. Although the tower would not be rebuilt until 1933, the Church was restored within a few years. The rubble was cleared, £1600 was raised by public subscription to repair the nave ceiling, chancel arch and aisles. Escreet designed a new pulpit, reading desk and lectern. A parishioner game him a guinea to buy wood for the lectern: happily e a large oak, which had been felled some twelve years earlier, was still lying on Hempstead Hall land and Escreet persuaded the owners, the Almacks, to donate the wood. A local carpenter cut the wood and delivered it and Escreet set to work carving a new pulpit, reading desk and lectern. After services resumed, Escreet realised that the church still lacked a porch and so he carved that as well!
Escreet gave his own account to the Royal Magazine in this arcticle of 1900, where he also passes on some tips for would be woodcarvers.
