The most valuable thing that this world affords

High on the edge of the Cotswold Escarpment at North Nibley stands an impressive tower, from which there are views of over twenty miles across the Severn Valley. It is known as the Tyndale Monument, and was built in honour of William Tyndale (1494 – 1536). 

 

The Tyndale Monument

So, who was he, and why was he deemed worthy of such a huge memorial? He only lived for 42 years and died in exile in Belgium by being strangled, then burnt. What terrible crime had he committed to warrant such a ghoulish punishment? It’s hard to believe today……. 

 

William Tyndale

Tyndale was born near Dursley in Gloucestershire and went on to study theology at Oxford. He was appalled to discover that the theology course did not include studying the bible, which was available in Latin and Greek but not in English. Language was no problem to him: he was skilful in Hebrew, Latin, Greek, Italian, Spanish, English and French. He became convinced that if Christianity was to be meaningful to ordinary people, rather than simply a cultural label, everyone should have access to the Bible in English. 

 

 

Fortunately, the printing press had recently been invented, so it would be possible for a translation to be reproduced many times; and he made it his life’s work to translate the New Testament into English, an act that was strictly banned. It was a dangerous thing to do: the leaders of the church had been corrupted by political and religious power and believed that if people could read the bible for themselves the church authorities would lose their power over the population. 

 

An early printing press

 

Tyndale moved to London but found no support there, so he moved on to Germany. After his English New Testament was completed and printed, copies were smuggled into England and denounced by the Roman Catholic authorities. Secret agents were sent to trap him. Tyndale was accused of heresy and thereafter, he went into hiding for few years. Later, he moved to Belgium where he was betrayed and then arrested by the imperial authorities. He was convicted of heresy and sentenced to death by being strangled and burned at the stake. 

 

Tyndale's New Testament

Before he died, he cried out “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes!” His hope and prayer was that Henry VIII would allow the Bible to be read in English by anyone who wished to read it. His prayer was answered: Within few years of Tyndale’s execution, King Henry VIII had published the English ‘Great Bible’ which drew heavily from Tyndale’s translation. Thousands of copies were printed, and one placed in every parish church where it could be read by any parishioner. Tyndale’s phenomenal work formed the basis of all subsequent English translations of the Bible and profoundly affected the development of the English language. Indeed, Tyndale’s translation was brilliant in its own right, and has had at least as much influence on our language as the writings of Shakespeare have had. 

 

The Great Bible

It was a tragedy that Christianity had been divided into two sorts of Christians – those who used religion as a power base, and those who genuinely sought a relationship with Jesus Christ. To this day there remains a division between ‘’cultural’ Christians and real believers. (I would define a real believer as someone who believes Jesus is alive, seeks a relationship with him, and seeks to put into practice his teachings.) When I was living in Uganda I discovered that if you asked someone “Are you a Christian?” they might well say “Yes”, but if you went on to ask “Are you saved?” they might say “No”. What they would have meant was that they had been educated in a Christian School and saw themselves as Christians rather than Muslims or animists. But they had not gone on to develop a commitment to Jesus as their Lord or the Bible as their guide. 

 

The Bible is still hugely in demand, both in Britain and abroad. Organisations such as The Bible Society, Scripture Union, The Word for the World, and Wycliffe Bible Translators *(see below)  promote the translation, distribution and reading of Bibles throughout the world. 

 

When Queen Elizabeth II was crowned she was presented with a Bible by the archbishop of Canterbury, who described it as ‘this Book, the most valuable thing that this world affords.’ And yet……. A recent poll suggest that only 6% of people in Britain read the Bible, and even 55% of Christians do not bother to read it regularly. 

It’s a book that Tyndale gave his life for, to make it available to us. 

It’s a book that has been described as ‘the most valuable thing that this world affords.’ 

It’s a book which tells us what our Maker wants us to know about Himself. 

So why is it neglected by so many in Britain – a country where virtually everyone has been taught how to read? There’s the challenge! 

 

* 

• The Bible Society: https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/ 

• Scripture Union: https://content.scriptureunion.org.uk/bible-reading-guides 

• The Word for the World: https://twftw.org.uk/ 

• Wycliffe Bible Translators: https://wycliffe.org.uk/ 

P.S. I wrote about my own introduction to the Bible and my thoughts about it in a blog entry in December 2019 entitled 'The best story-book in the world.'  If you are reading this on a computer you can find it if you copy and paste the following: 

https://mpriorblog.blogspot.com/2019/12/v-behaviorurldefaultvmlo.html

Some reflections on being 80

 

It’s  great to get to 80 in sound health.  Recently I came across an amusing quotation about being 80, which I reproduce here:

"Why, a man with any feeling ought to be ashamed of being eighty, let alone more. Where’s his religion, I should like to know, when he goes flying in the face of the Bible like that? Threescore-and-ten’s the mark, and no man with a conscience, and a proper sense of what’s expected of him, has any business to live longer."

(1843 Charles Dickens Martin Chuzzlewit, chapter 11)

The quotation is based on Psalm 90 in the Bible, which says ‘Our lives last seventy years or, if we are strong, eighty years. Even the best of them are struggle and sorrow; indeed, they pass quickly and we fly away.’

As a child I was given a bible and encouraged to read it every day: a habit which I have continued all my life and highly recommend.   I wrote about it in my blog entry for 10th December 2019 under the title 'The best story book in the world' 

 https://mpriorblog.blogspot.com/2019/12/v-behaviorurldefaultvmlo.html

(To read this, highlight the link above, and then click on 'Open Link')

Psalm 90 was written by that great leader of the Hebrews, Moses.  It’s intriguing that he says what he does here, putting our typical lifespan at 70 or 80 years, because he himself was 80 when he was given the responsibility of leading the Hebrews out of Egypt in the Exodus, which resulted in them being in the wilderness for 40 years before settling in the Promised Land. Moses led them through the desert, and died at the age of 120, his task complete.  Thus his most important work was given to him after the age of 80!  So 80 is not necessarily an end-point. It can just as easily be a starting point!

There have been three times in my life when it felt rather as though my end had come.

1^st – when I was 4 years old another 4-year old friend pushed me into a deep water-channel and ran off.   I was out of my depth and screaming. Fortunately a young factory-worker heard me and came out of the nearby factory and pulled me out. I walked home dripping.   I can’t imagine what my mother thought when I got home!

2^nd – many  years later we were on our way to Uganda in a Boeing 707 when we hit an air pocket whilst flying over Sudan. It may not have been as dangerous as it felt, but the plane suddenly dropped thousands of feet through the air and everyone came out of their seats, several of them hitting the ceiling.  Our baby son David, who was asleep in a carrycot, finished up two rows further forward, upside down on the floor. I now know what it feels like to be in a crashing plane!  Although the plane regained normal flight it certainly felt like a near-death experience.

 

 3^rd – much more recently I was driving the car on my own when I was pushed off the road by the driver behind me. (He later claimed in court that he had suffered from an epileptic fit – a story which the judge believed). As for me, I finished upside down at the side of the road. Had I hit a tree or a telephone post the consequences would probably have been fatal.

 

But here’s the thing: I emerged unscratched from all these experiences.    I have always felt that my life has had a plan to it, guided by God.  I have felt especially in the big things like changing jobs, moving house, getting married, that God has been in charge, looking after me.  (This is very comforting, and it’s a great privilege: much better than feeling that life is merely random!)  I have felt this even when things have seemed on the surface to be going wrong, such as when Lindsay my first wife became ill, and the illness became terminal. 

 

Lindsay, 1988

 

Or when I had to break contract, leave my job and return from Uganda to England with my family because of difficulties caused by the government of Idi Amin.   

Meeting Idi Amin in better times

 

 The plan changes all the time as I get older, and prayer is always involved.   So, on we go, and gradually I will experience the plan for my 80s, together with Wendy who is  such a help and support.

My grandparents' generation

                MY GRANDPARENTS' GENERATION

 As I read the history of our family I am struck most strongly by our Christian heritage that can be traced back over so many generations. In each generation most of the family have become practising Christians, and our family seems to have been privileged by a special blessing from God. A prayer  was passed on to me by my Aunt Grace. She was a great woman of prayer and kept family photos on a ‘prayer board’ in her kitchen, whom she prayed for by name every day. She prefaced her prayer by the words ‘…that not one of them may be missing in the coming Day of Glory’ a family prayer which was perhaps inspired by Jeremiah 23.4 and Matthew 24.30, and which has been passed down through the generations since Pamela Ann Woods Prior (wife of John Francis Prior) first used it nearly 200 years ago. I imagine we all owe a great deal to members of the family who have been faithful in using this and similar prayers to uphold us all.

 

One of the occupations which involved several members of the family was the family business founded by John Woods Prior, and re-established by the first of the Ebenezers  - Ebenezer Prior Ltd, Woolstaplers and Fellmongers, which had offices and warehouses in Chichester, Bradford, Taunton and Wellington (Somerset). When I knew the business during my childhood they were dealing at the Bradford end mainly with high quality wools such as Southdown and New Zealand Southdown, which the business bought at auctions run by the Wool Marketing Board, graded, sorted and had scoured (washed) by a neighbouring business in Bradford. Then the wool would be sold, often to the newspaper printing industry which required wool for their printing rollers which had to bounce back readily after each revolution of the roller. No man-made fibre at the time could do this so there was a ready demand for the wool, especially as the rollers would wear out every fortnight or so!  Other wool was sold to clothing manufacturers in Scotland, and I was the driver for grandpa and granny on two occasions when they did their annual tour of Scotland, which was a joint holiday and business trip. Grandpa could never be persuaded to take a holiday unless there was some purpose to it, and the business tour provided this purpose.  

 

Ebenezer and Emily Prior had 12 children. Most of them continued to live in the Chichester area. There was my great-uncle John  who apart from being a director of the family business was a leading member of the Open Brethren and a well-known conference speaker. It was intriguing that one of the woolsorters of E Prior Ltd during the Second World War was a Mr Elliott, who was transferred or loaned to Beavans of Holt, Wiltshire, where he eventually retired due to failing eyesight. By the time I met him at Neston Gospel Hall in 1973 he was completely blind. He had no idea therefore who I was, but as soon as he heard me speak at the Gospel Hall he knew that I was a Prior. Apparently my voice was the same as uncle John’s, whom he had heard speak many times in years gone by. The interesting thing was that by now John had been dead for many years, and I had only met John once in my life, for perhaps half an hour, when I was about 8 years old.

 

Great-uncle Mark was also well known in the Open Brethren. His son was Peter. His second wife Joyce Shadbolt was the mother of Peter’s wife Elizabeth. Peter got fed-up with the family business – it had too many old men (Ebenezer, John, Bert, Mark, Syd, - all drawing good salaries out of a company which was really too small for such a large number of directors, and dominating the control of the business when Peter and my father should have had far more say. So Peter left, and with his wife Elizabeth went into social work, looking after old lags in hostels for ex-convicts. For this work he was eventually honoured with an MBE

 

Great uncle Gilbert was known usually as Bert. He remained single all his life. In his later years he lived appropriately at Pryors farm, Nyetimber, near Bognor, a family property which he inherited.  He owned a yacht, was rather dapper, and liked to use the family crest on his notepaper!

 

Uncle Bert

Three of the sisters, Hannah, Rhoda, and Emily Ballard lived at Kensington Cottage in Fishbourne near Chichester where I met them as a child. They and the house had a delightful Victorian feel about them. Hannah and Rhoda were single; Emily was widowed. 

Hannah and Rhoda (screenshots from 8mm film)

 In 1998 I returned to Fishbourne to see if the house still stood. It is there on the main street, but its surroundings have deteriorated completely as the village has grown; and the area is now almost overshadowed by an awful viaduct which is part of the Chichester by-pass. 

 

Kensington Cottage

The old long-case clock which I now possess used to be at ‘K.C.’ and before that at Donnington Cottage.

 

Mary married into the Shippam family who were the big meat-paste manufacturers in Chichester, and had a daughter called Everil who was a gynaecologist in private practice. 

 

Jessie married Charles Steinitz. Their son Paul Steinitz became well-known as the founder and conductor of the London Bach Choir.

 

 

Then there was Sydney, seen by the others as the black sheep of the family because he was the only one who broke away from the Christian faith. He went off to be a banker in Brazil but returned after the second world war and joined the Bradford branch of the family business. When he saw me he always gave me half-a-crown which I thought was riches indeed (grandpa would only give me a silver sixpence – but much more regularly). He was married but had no children. They gave me a violin when I was a teenager, which is still in the family. 

 

 Uncle Syd used to annoy my father because he would get Eddy the general driver and handyman from the business to come out in the car to Saltaire where they lived, to pick up his wife (Aunt Mabel) and take her in to Brown Muffs, a very respectable department store in Bradford, where they would have lunch and she would have her hair done. Father thought it was a misuse of Eddy’s time.  (Eddy was a cheerful chap who was always joking. He would wear a peaked cap when driving, and because it didn’t have a badge on it he fixed on a tin Marmite bottle lid to look like a badge. He was the origin of a number of strange sayings which our family used, like calling fish and chips ‘finerks’).

 

I know virtually nothing about the remaining great uncles: John Woods Prior and Richard Henry Prior, though I had some contact with Richard Henry’s son  - uncle Dick, who was a squadron leader of spitfires in the war, later a housemaster at Kings School Canterbury, then Headmaster of a school in Nigeria, then came to teach temporarily at Bradford Grammar School just after I had left in 1960, and finally was headmaster of a new school in Oxford. Dick and his wife Joan retired to Shaftesbury.   

 

Dick Prior in the RAF during the war

Dick and Joan Prior with us

Their son Mark is a monk at Taize.They also had a daughter called Hazel. Uncle Dick’s sister was Aunt Peggy, (Margaret Prior) who was headmistress of Ellerslie School for girls in Malvern. After retirement she lived in Long Hanborough and then Woodstock, and in both places was a remarkably strong Christian influence. I attended her funeral in 1999, where the vicar gave a talk in which he indicated that she had been a stronger factor in the growth of his church than he had.  She had loads of energy and always had time for people, and of course a great interest in young people. I have no photos of Peggy, but when we visited Malvern some years ago we discovered that there is a memorial garden to her there.

 

 

Ebenezer Francis Prior was my grandfather. He was grandpa to me, but affectionately known in the family simply as Eb.  As a child he had been brought up in the Calvinistic environment of Providence Chapel, but after coming to live in Bradford he founded a Brethren Assembly whose links were with a branch of the exclusives known as the Kelly Brethren. It was in this environment that I was brought up. Grandpa was a very devout man who loved his bible and his library of Christian books. In my early childhood he and Granny lived at Burley-in-Wharfedale in a large end-terrace house with a substantial garden and a large hen-run. Previously it had had a tennis court at the back, but after the war this had been compulsorily purchased as part of  a new housing estate. (Over the years Burley has continued to grow and is a much bigger village now). He would drive each day to ‘the office’ which was then in Cheapside in Bradford where the firm had warehouses and an office which was delightfully Victorian in feel – almost like a scene out of Dickens with high wooden desks and ancient swivel chairs. There was a mini-telephone exchange on grandpa’s desk with old-fashioned ‘eyelid’ indicators on it. The warehouses were piled high with wool, and there was a door on each floor leading out to the crane which would hoist bales of wool on and off the lorries. The painting ‘A bit of old Cheapside’  happens to be a picture of our firm (probably before it was owned by us).  

 

 Subsequently the building in Cheapside was demolished and the firm moved into one of our other warehouses (we had three in Bradford) at the bottom of  Dyson Street. This building was still standing in 2022, though others nearby had been demolished. It is now called Ruby House and has been converted into apartments

 

The warehouse and office in Dyson Street

Grandpa and my father with fellow woolmen

Grandpa at the old Wool Exchange in Bradford

Whilst Shippams and Ebenezer Prior Ltd were probably the two most significant businesses in Chichester in the 19th Century, the picture of the Wool Exchange in Bradford in the 20th century indicates that Ebenezer Prior Ltd was in fact only a small part of an enormous wool industry in the North of England.

It is worth noting that the business of Ebenezer Prior Ltd had an exceptionally good reputation. Many businesses drive hard bargains; many are unscrupulous or dishonest, but a deal made with our business could be completely relied upon, and this gained the company and those who ran it a great deal of respect in the local business community. 

 

E F Prior ('Eb')   about 1960

On Sundays grandpa and granny would drive to ‘the meeting’ in Bradford which was held in the Sunday school room of the German Evangelical Church. Later on they moved into the church building itself, which the meeting rented, so we had the odd mixture of a very puritanical and simple meeting in a building with stained glass windows and a pipe organ. No instruments were used at the breaking of bread meeting in the morning, but the organ was used at the gospel service in the evening, and as  a teenager I was often the organist. The preachers were often really boring (and grandpa for all his enormous enthusiasm was not a gifted speaker, to my way of thinking), so when I was organist I could hide in the organ loft and read a book (usually a worthwhile Christian book, to ease my conscience!) to while away the time between hymns. 

 

Granny (originally Elizabeth Kennedy of Dumfries) had two unmarried sisters, aunts Jean and Jessie, who managed a hosiery shop in Skipton and subsequently in Ilkley. In later life, grandpa, granny, Jean and Jessie all moved into a detached but not very big house in Harden, near Bingley, where they ended their days. Grandpa and Granny’s grave is at Bingley cemetery. When David was little I managed to get a colour slide of four generations of Priors, Grandpa, father, me and David. This was taken in the conservatory at Harden.

 

My father Jack Prior  (Ebenezer John Woods Prior) was born in 1914 and lived first in Great Horton (Bradford) until the family moved to Burley-in-Wharfedale. He was educated at Bradford Grammar School and later at Ilkley Grammar School. One of his teachers, Miss Fisher, also taught me when I went to BGS. She was affectionately known to us as Old Ma Fishcakes.

 

Father  had two older sisters:

Norah who married Leonard Thurlow. Their two daughters are  Mary and Margaret.

Grace who married Hugh Lockett, and their children are David, Anthony, Merilyn, Gillian and Andrew.

E F Prior and family

 

Norah, Jack and Grace

Elizabeth Prior with Jack, Norah, Grace and Molly the dog

 

The next generation

                     THE PRIOR FAMILY OF CHICHESTER

 

Introduction: family line of descent

Henry Prior (1640?-1689) West Itchenor                 = Mary(d1682 at Birdham)

Henry Prior (b1660?) yeoman wheelwright, Sidlesham = Ann Earwicker (3rd wife)

Richard Prior (1696-1733) yeoman, Birdham         =  Susannah Osborn (1697-1767)

Henry Prior(1730-1764) yeoman, Birdham             = Sarah Spratt (1732-17890

Richard Prior (1758-1827) yeoman, Donnington    = Ann Fogden (1764-1828)

John Francis Prior (1789- 1829) grocer                  = Pamela Ann Woods(1790-1858)*

John Woods Prior (1813-1875) woolstapler           = Amelia Underdown

Ebenezer Prior (1848-1927) woolstapler                = Emily Penney

Ebenezer Francis Prior  (1882?-1975) woolstapler = Elizabeth Kennedy

Ebenezer John Woods Prior (1914-1989)woolstapler   = Gertrud Beyer  (1911- 1986)

Michael Raymond Ebenezer Prior (1942-      )teacher= 1  Lindsay Sims (1943 - 1994);                                                                                                  

    Janine Lindsay Prior (1970- ) = Sean Carter  

    David John Prior  (1972-    ) = Frances Crow    

    Andrew Michael Prior  (1977-  )= Deborah Callen

                                                                   =  2  Gwendoline (Wendy) Ennis (1951-)

    Leila Ennis (1979-    )                                                                                        

    Adrian Ennis (1985-     ) = Nicola Hammond

 

(* When Pamela Ann was widowed she subsequently married Captain George Cosens [1790-1850], a captain in the Sussex regiment, whose first wife Kate Gadd had died in 1831).

 

THE PRIORS OF SUSSEX

In 1824 we find the earliest mention in the records of Providence Chapel in Chichester of the name of Prior, first in the person of John Francis Prior (1789-1829), who was received into membership in that year, becoming a trustee; then also of his son John Woods Prior (1813-1875)

 

John Francis Prior is buried in Donnington churchyard. The Priors were a yeoman family who had previously farmed at Donnington since about 1780, and can be traced in the villages south of Chichester - Birdham, Sidlesham, North Mundham, East Wittering predominantly - to the second half of the 17^th century.

 

(A pedigree, compiled by Rev. J S Reynolds, tracing their descent from Henry Prior who died at West Itchenor in 1689/90, is deposited at the County record Office, Chichester. Family tradition claims Matthew Prior, statesman and poet (1664-1721) as a relation, and this appears not improbable; also Thomas Prior (1682-1751) founder of the Royal Dublin Society, which although the Priors of West Sussex used the same arms and crest, seems less likely).

 

Lieutenant Henry Fogden Prior R.N., brother of John Francis Prior, served at Trafalgar, aged 21, as Master’s Mate aboard HMS Belleisle.  See my blog entry of September 18th  2019 entitled 'Henry Prior and Trafalgar' for more about this.

See

http://mpriorblog.blogspot.com/2019/09/normal-0-false-false-false_18.html

John Francis Prior

John Francis Prior lived in North Street, Chichester. He married Pamela Anne Woods. At the age of 18 Pamela, who had been brought up in the established church, went to live in Havant, where she found that “What we then thought the gospel was not preached in the church” and transferred to the independent chapel in Havant. Here she met John Prior and married him when she was 21. They moved to Chichester where eventually they came to worship at Providence Chapel.  Of their three children only John Woods Prior (1813-1875) lived to maturity. 

 

John Woods Prior

He became a principal pillar of the chapel. He was the founder of the family wool-stapling business in Tower Street, Chichester, which subsequently expanded with branches at Bradford and Taunton. He married Amelia Underdown, a member of an ancient Devonshire family seated at Widoworthy Barton. The most noteworthy of their children were Richard Henry Prior, M.D., J.P., mayor of St Albans in 1877, Ebenezer Prior, woolstapler, mayor of Chichester in 1896, and George Cosens Prior, a solicitor who became a unitarian minister.

 

 

 

There is a story about John Woods Prior’s childhood. His schoolmaster was a very severe one and was very fond of thrashing. John was very clever and good at arithmetic; he was put into a new rule and given a sum to do. The master would not instruct him into the rule but on the Saturday told him that if the sum was not brought properly done on the Monday morning he would give him a good thrashing. He was going to his grandfather Richard’s house in Donnington that Saturday afternoon - he was naturally much distressed at what awaited him on Monday morning and earnestly prayed to God that he would show him how to do the sum. No one knew of it but in the afternoon he went out into the Donnington House garden to play, and there was a leaf from an exercise book which had evidently blown over the hedge and John picked it up. To his astonishment there was the sum in full which he had been ordered to do. He never forgot this, and in later life he was often heard to say that although in his active life he had many direct answers to prayer he never forgot this one, for it was the means of leading him to take all things in prayer to God.

 

 ‘A short account of the death of the late Mr J W Prior of Chichester’ in the Gospel Advocate, 1875, states “John Woods Prior was a devoted man of God, and the prosperity of the chapel during the third quarter of the 19^th century may be partly attributed to his constant attention to the cause. Called by grace in early years, his life throughout was a bright example of practical godliness, and a witness to the reality of his religion…. his loving and peaceable spirit, tender fear of god, firmness in the truth, and upright walk in life rendered him greatly beloved by the Church and congregation worshipping at Providence Chapel; and indeed by all the Lord’s people who knew him. These were not a few, as for 25 years his house was the home of all the Lord’s servants who supplied at the chapel.” When he died in 1875 he made an edifying death, though afflicted by a painful disease which caused his last illness to be a time of special trial. Replying to a remark of his wife about heaven he said “I long to be there. A dear Christ. I love His person. Precious Christ. Mercy, nothing but mercy! His loveliness. I see Him. I know Him, and the fellowship of His sufferings. I love Him greatly.”  The Prior family often engendered men of ‘nervous’ disposition, and    J W Prior was no exception. Writing to a friend in 1874 he said “I am thankful to say, that I am better than at one time; but my nerves are still sensitive …  I hope that the day will come when the Lord will deliver me from all my fears, and enable me to rejoice more fully in His name, for His name is indeed precious; and unto them that love his name, he is precious.”

 

Ebenezer Prior

Ebenezer Prior became a trustee of the chapel in 1880. He married Emily Penney. Their second daughter Mary married Ernest Shippam, head of a firm whose name has become a household word far beyond Chichester. Ebenezer resigned his membership in 1889 owing to a difference of opinion over the propriety of his serving as a city councillor - he was mayor in 1896. 

 

 

A special edition of ‘Chichester Views and reviews’ in 1895/6 had a long article about Ebenezer Prior which says

 “The woolstapling business carried on by Mr Ebenezer Prior has a widespread and distinctive celebrity at home and abroad. This is a very old business that has been established over a century, and has always been connected with the same family. It was originally founded by Mr Reeves; and his grandson Mr Ebenezer Prior, the present Chief Magistrate of Chichester, has for many years been sole proprietor and has greatly enhanced the prestige of the business.   . . . . . . .Mr Prior is well known for his active interest in the moral as well as the material welfare of the working classes generally, and this is shown especially in the care he takes for the interests of his own employees. Being a strong advocate of total abstinence, he shows a practical desire for keeping his men from the public house, by providing on the premises the means to obtain beverages of a non-alcoholic nature. He has provided a special room equipped with a gas stove, and here the men have the privilege of refreshing themselves with a cup of excellent tea at any time they desire it. This is quite in keeping with Mr Prior’s character. He has for many years taken a leading part in many social, educational and philanthropic movements in the city as well as in public affairs tending to the general welfare.  He is President of the Total Abstinence Society, secretary to the Sanitary Association, and a manager of the Lancastrian voluntary Schools. He is at present interesting himself in obtaining good secondary educational advantages for the city. He is an active member of the Board of Guardians, and was largely instrumental in procuring trained instead of pauper nurses in the workhouse, and in obtaining extension of the Poor Law area, as well as altering the dietary table in the workhouse, and in enabling inmates to wear other than pauper uniform when temporarily visiting the outside world. Recently he has been re-elected as Chairman of the Board of Guardians for the 5^th time, a recognition of his success in extending the boundary of the Union and amalgamating the 13 parishes into one parish, now the parish of Chichester. Mr Prior was also Chairman of the Rural District Council of Chichester for the whole of its existence. He is Justice of the Peace for both the city of Chichester and the county of Sussex, and has since 1889 been a member of the City Council, of which he is now Chief magistrate. His election to the mayoral chair was a fitting honour. He was for many years vice-chairman of the Drainage, Extension, Lighting and other committees, and succeeded with the co-operation of others in completing against severe opposition the drainage of the city, in extending two borough boundaries, in settling the Lease question on the basis of enfranchisement, in the settlement of the Asylum contribution, and in the consolidation of the city debt and the issue of city stock. Mr Prior is negotiating for the purchase of the water works by the corporation, and has shown himself to be one of the most able, dignified, impartial and public spirited chief magistrates that Chichester has had for many years. Since he was elected mayor in 1895 he has presided at the luncheon given by the Mayor and Corporation to the new Bishop of Chichester after the ceremony of enthronement, all the mayors of Sussex attending in their robes and chains of office. The Mayor, who is himself a nonconformist, belonging to the Independent body, was born in Chichester on October 18^th 1848, so that he is a comparatively young man. His private residence is Northleigh House, Tower Street, and he is in telephonic communication with his three warehouses, so that the business in each department is always under the personal control of either Mr Prior or his son.”

I have written in much more detail about Ebenezer Prior in my blog entry of January 31 2020, entitled 'A remarkable man'.

 see

 http://mpriorblog.blogspot.com/2020/01/

 

Woolsorting

Woolsorters

 The firm of Ebenezer Prior Ltd, Woolstaplers and Fellmongers has long since disappeared from Chichester, but the memory lingers on in these signposts.