This fine house at the corner of Shrubbery Road and Downend Road in Downend near Bristol was built in 1879. Its original occupant was the Rev John Walter Dann. He had recently succeeded the first Vicar of Downend, Rev Alfred Peache, who had held the post since 1875. In the early years of the present century Downend Vicarage became a day nursery. From its consecration in 1831 until 1874 the church next to the cricket ground in Downend had been a chapel of ease to St James, Mangotsfield. Such chapels were to be found in many burgeoning townships in the 19th century. Their purpose was to enable parishioners to worship more easily when their Parish Church was some distance away. Often the chapel of ease was bigger than its mother church. This was certainly the case in Downend where the chapel also had to accommodate the parishioners in Staple Hill. From 1859 until 1874 Peache had been the parish priest of St James and was living in Cleve Lodge, a substantial property close to the junction of Cleeve Hill and Badminton Road. The house (depicted in the second comment) later became Cleeve Lodge and was, until recently, a care home for the elderly. But it is destined to be demolished if it hasn't been already. Initially Peache's official title had not been 'Vicar' but rather the lesser one of 'Perpetual Curate'. However, by an Act of Parliament of 1868, the distinction was for practical purposes abolished and Peache was able to call himself the Vicar of Mangotsfield. At about the same time John Walter Dann joined the parish as a curate. By 1874, the population of Downend and Staple Hill far exceeded that of Mangotsfield and, in recognition of its increased importance, the chapel of ease became a parish church in its own right, Alfred Peache became vicar and his post at St James went to the Rev Korah Nichols Brandon. There was no vicarage at Downend so Peache probably remained at the Mangotsfield Vicarage. Then, some time after he resigned in in the summer of 1877, Dann was ordained Vicar. The Peache family finally left Cleve Lodge on 6 November, 1877. Peache was well disposed to his former curate and helped him in a campaign to secure a vicarage for the new parish. The land was the gift of Sir Stephen Cave, head of a well established Downend family and both Peache and Cave probably contributed to the building costs. In 1879, John Walter Dann, his wife and three daughters moved into the new Vicarage and, joined later by two more daughters, he stayed until there his death in 1915. Alfred Peache and John Dann were both interesting characters. Alfred, who was born in Lambeth in 1818, was second son of James Courthope Peache, a barge builder, timber merchant and one-time Deputy Lieutenant of the County of Surrey. During a long life James amassed a considerable fortune some of which he used in the support of ecclesiastical and educational institutions. An example was his support for the living at Mangotsfield so it was perhaps with help from his father that, in 1842, the 23-year-old Alfred Peache was installed as curate of Mangotsfield. His parish priest was the Rev Robert Brodie who had been the incumbent since 1822. In 1854 Alfred became curate of Heckfield in Hampshire. Although it has a huge church, Heckfield was – and still is – a tiny village and, as such, would warrant no more than a curate. Thus Alfred was the parish priest and could regard the move as a promotion. He was still in post at Heckfield when his father died in 1858 and Robert Brodie retired on 17 October 1859. His older brother, Clement, had already died in 1850. By consequence of these three events Alfred inherited firstly a considerable fortune and secondly the living at Mangotsfield. He became one of the wealthiest clergymen in England and one of the most important benefactors of the Church of England. Some 20 or 30 English vicarages and churches, the London College of Divinity all became Peache beneficiaries. Included amongst them were the vicarages at Mangotsfield and Downend. After resigning as Vicar of Downend he retired to a house in Cambridge Park, Twickenham from where his influence spread yet wider. He was Chancellor of the Western Division of Ontario, Canada, in 1885 and became a benefactor of Huron College in Toronto. He died in Twickenham in the final months of 1900 but his memory is enshrined in the name of a road that, apropriately enough, runs from Mangotsfield to Downend. John Dann was born in County Cork in 1842. When he died in 1915 he was sufficiently well known in cricketing circles to merit the following obituary in the 1915/16 Wisden's Almanack: "THE REV. JOHN WALTER DANN, M. A. brother-in-law of the late Dr. W. G. Grace, was born at Fermoy, County Cork, on November 20, 1842, and died at Downend, of which parish he had been Vicar for 47* years, on July 22. He was never much of a cricketer, but took a keen interest in the game, and played occasionally for the Thornbury and Downend clubs. He took a very active part in the formation of the Gloucestershire County C. C., undertaking practically all the correspondence in the matter for the late Dr. H. M. Grace. In his younger days he was an excellent lawn tennis player, and he played quite a good game until he was 70." WG Grace, the most famous cricketer of all time, came from a Downend family and John Dann's status as his brother-in-law came as a result of his marriage on 23 June 1869 to WG's sister, Elizabeth Blanche Grace. That was while Downend was still a Chapel of Ease so the marriage took place in its mother church, St James, Mangotsfield. John Dann was born eight years before WG – enough for him to have been appointed tutor to the young cricketer. He also outlived him by eight years. In fact, although Dann was at Downend for 47 years, he was only Vicar for the last 37 of them. Sources for the above include the National Archives, Oxford University Alumni, 1500-1886, 'The University of London and its Colleges' by Stanley Gordon Francis Wilson, 1923 (pp 99-100), 'Our Parish Mangotsfield Including Downend' by Arthur Emlyn-Jones (1899) and various Kelly's county directories. Further notes not directly connected with Downend Vicarage Alfred's grandfather was Clement Peache. It was he who, with his son – Alfred's father – James Courthope Peache set up the boat-building business at 59 Belvedere Road, Lambeth, near St Mary's Church and Lambeth Palace. The building was demolished in 1949. There's more about it here. In 1820 Sir Theodore Janssen, a wealthy director of the South Sea Company built a large house just west of St Mary's church in Wimbledon. He called it Wimbledon House and used bricks from the recently demolished Elizabethan Manor House in its construction. In 1833 Alfred's father, James Courthope Peache, purchased Wimbledon House and renamed it Belvedere House after the road in Lambeth where his timber business was located. He, his wife Alice and some of his children almost certainly lived there until he died in 1858. Alice died the following year. Belvedere House was demolished in 1900 but there are still reminders of his time there in the names of roads in what is now the Belvedere Estate. Clement Road, Courthope Road and Belvedere Avenue, Drive, Grove and Square all serve as reminders of James Courthope Peache. Clement, by the way, was not only the name of James's father but also of one of his sons. There is a comprehensive record of past and present housing developments in the area here (which mentions Peache) and here (which, although it's a later version, doesn't!). The All England Lawn Tennis Club lies immediately to the north of the Belvedere Estate. In 1877 Alfred Peache set up the Peache Trust which has the right to appoint the vicar to a number of Anglican churches in England. In 2010 this so-called advowson extended to 45 churches. Alfred named his eldest son after his father. The second James Courthope Peache (1852-1931) was a leading inventor and engineer. He was responsible for the Paxman "Peache Patent" High-speed, Single-acting Steam Engines manufactured by Davey Paxman & Co of Colchester which firm he joined in 1893. He later became first Managing Director and then Chairman of Willans Works of Rugby, manufacturers of steam engines and boilers for the electrical power generation industry. There's a photo of an early Willans steam turbine here. 1000th view 27 February 2013