Bawdeswell – All Saints’ Church (Quintin Edward Gurney)

I was interested in this stained glass window at All Saints’ Church as that’s a rather impressive period to be the churchwarden, from 1912 to 1968. Major Quintin Edward Gurney was born on 20 February 1883 and he was the son of Richard Hanbury Joseph Gurney, aged 28 at the time of Quintin’s birth, and Sarah Evelyn (Buxton) Gurney, then aged 29. His siblings included Christopher Richard Gurney, Rachel (Gurney) Bruce, Richenda Evelyn Gurney, and Gladys Catherine (Gurney) Wynn.

In 1911, Quintin Edward Gurney married Emily Ada Pleasance Ruggles-Brise in Braintree, Essex. His wife, born in 1880, lived until 1972 and the Ruggles-Brise family was also well-established, particularly in Essex, further solidifying Gurney’s social standing through this union. Together, Quintin and Emily had a substantial family, documented as having at least four sons and two daughters. Their known children were Pleasance Evelyn (1913–1996), Richard Quintin (1914–1980), Ruth Cecilia (1917–2017), Edward Ralph (1919–1937), John Romer (1920–1932) and Archibald James (1932–2004). He held the rank of Major in the British Army, specifically serving with the Norfolk Yeomanry. The Norfolk Yeomanry was a unit often associated with the county’s gentry and farming communities, so this wasn’t really a working class lad done good and indeed he was from the wealthy Gurney family whose bank was taken over by Barclays, with Quintin himself being a director of the TSB.

Here he is when he was at Harrow School in the late nineteenth century. As can be noted from the stained glass window, following his death in 1968, his son Richard Quintin took over the role of churchwarden until his own death in 1980.