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I always intended to replace "Holy Innocents" (GC2E505) - revamp it with a new theme in a different spot.
This is it.
I have been interested in a man who must be one of Highnam's most famous residents - the philanthropist: Thomas Gambier-Parry.
He certainly left his mark in the area.
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Thomas Gambier Parry - 22nd February 1816–28th September 1888 - benefactor and art collector.
Gambier Parry's parents (Richard and Mary Parry), died when he was young, he was then raised by his maternal aunts and uncles, the Gambiers.
He was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge.
He moved to Highnam Court, Gloucestershire when he was 21 and, in 1839, he married, firstly, Anna Maria Isabella Fynes-Clinton, daughter of Henry Fynes Clinton. Only two of their six children survived to adulthood, Clinton Charles Parry and Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (the composer); Isabella survived the birth of Hubert in 1848 by only twelve days.
In 1851, Gambier Parry married, secondly, Ethelinda Lear, daughter of Francis Lear, Dean of Salisbury, by whom he had six more children.
Thomas Gambier Parry's father and grandfather were both directors of the British East India Company, and Gambier Parry devoted his inherited wealth to good works.
After studying the technique of the Italian fresco painters, Thomas Gambier Parry developed his own spirit fresco method and executed grand-scale mural projects at Ely Cathedral, Gloucester Cathedral and the parish church at Highnam.
He gained the reputation of a philanthropist, founding a children's hospital, orphanage, and college of science and art at Gloucester, and providing a church and school for his tenants at Highnam.
He constructed the Church of the Holy Innocents, Highnam between 1849 and 1851 in memory of his first wife and those of his children who had died at early ages. Gambier-Parry adorned the whole of the chancel, including the roof, and much of the nave with frescoes using the new Gambier Parry process he adapted from his study of Italian fresco painters.
He is buried there in a tomb designed by his son Sidney. He started to lay out the Highnam Court gardens in 1840 and was one of the first to make a pinetum (arboretum); by 1874 the gardens rivaled any in the UK.
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Gambier-Parry certainly influenced 'ecclesiastical' restoration at St John's Chapel in Gloucester Cathedral, Holy Innocents at Highnam, St Mary's at Rudford and The Church of St John The Baptist at Huntley. Some have baulked at the heavy-handedness of these renovations; they are - to coin a phrase; "vividly Victorian".
Personally - I find some of it rather ostentatious and grandiose; however, they have been preserved and maintained, when they might well have been left to ruin or further neglect.
People must decided for themselves.