Rev. Claude Arthur Hedley Going M.A.

  Notes:

From http://www.thepeerage.com/p19236.htm#i192359

"Reverend Claude Arthur Hedley Going lived in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England. He graduated with a Master of Arts (M.A.)"


St.Agnes (Birmingham). Centenial History;
"Claude Going was one of nine children, the son of an Irishman whose career was spent in the Navy, and his childhood was therefore spent in a succession of Naval ports. His father died when he was only 14 years old and he spent much of the later years of his youth with an aunt in Cornwall, where he attended Chancellor's School, in Truro. He went up to Pembroke College, Cambridge and graduated B.A. in 1895. He took his M.A. in 1908. Whilst at Cambridge he was a keen sportsman, excelling especially in rowing. He was ordained priest in Truro Cathedral in 1900 and became curate of Crowan. He moved to St George's, Truro in 1903 and left there for Christ Church, Reading two years later in 1905. In 1907 he was instituted to his first benefice as Rector of Pleasley in north Derbyshire.
Pleasley was a country living in the mining district near Mansfield. There was a large amount of glebe land, an enormous rectory with an extensive garden and a good income. However, it was not sufficient to educate his large family of six children at boarding school and, while a governess sufficed while they were young, city day schools became a necessity later. It was for this reason that he exchanged Pleasley for the much poorer living at St.Agnes with John Pyddoke. He was instituted vicar at St Agnes on Sunday 1st September, 1918, by the Archdeacon of Birmingham.
They moved, not into St Agnes House, which was considered too small, but into Stanley House, in Wake Green Road, which had been used as a home for Belgian refugees through the early years of The Great War. Its condition left much to be desired and the whole family were glad to move into the new vicarage in 1923. However, even this was considered small in comparison with the great rectory at Pleasley. But the garden was sufficiently large for all the family's vegetables to be grown, for hens to be kept and for a tennis court to be laid out on the south lawn.
Mr.Going's wife, Muriel Catherine, was already familiar with South Birmingham since her father, the Revd C.C.Murray-Browne, had once been Vicar of Balsall Heath for some twelve years. As a vicarage child she knew what was expected of a Vicar's wife and, besides caring for her large family, she involved herself quickly in the life of the parish. Within a year she had sufficiently increased interest in the Mothers' Union for a separate St Agnes branch to be formed, rather than meeting jointly with St.Mary's.
Claude Going's eighteen years as Vicar were marked by considerable additions to the fabric; the improvements the sanctuary, the parish hall, the church tower - but he was essentially a pastoral minister who gave free reign to a succession of able members of his congregation. This was helped by the new powers given to Parochial Church Councils in 1921. At St.Agnes, this measure was introduced smoothly and the council was encouraged to take its new duties of partnership seriously. Henry Marshall was churchwarden when Mr.Going came and they remained firm friends and partners, Mr Marshall providing the business brain and efficiency to match Going's pastoral care.
Marshall wrote later that Claude Going was 'a gentleman, in the truest sense of the word .... at his best in the reading of prayers and his rendering of the Communion Service .... He was never in a hurry, and always took time to render his Services according to his own ideals'. He introduced Choral Communion services for the great Feast days and was concerned to provide organisations and teaching for young people. Sunday School, in the church hall on Sunday afternoons, had numerous classes for which his daughters were succesively drafted in. He, himself took the 'Catechism Club' for older children. All this was undertaken with the burden of physical handicap, since he had lost a leg in the First World War. However, this did not limit his mobility and with his artificial leg, he was able to cycle around the parish.
He resigned the living in the latter part of 1935 after master-minding the church's fiftieth anniversary celebrations the year previously. His youngest daughter's schooling was almost completed and he gratefully accepted the country living of Fitz, just to the North of Shrewsbury, who squire and patron of the living he knew. There was a grand farewell party in the hall on February 19th, 1936 and, two days later, a coach-load of parishoners journeyed to Fitz for his Induction by the Bishop of Lichfield.
Besides his personal handicap, Mr.Going suffered the loss of two of his children; Catherine, who died from illness in Germany in 1937, aged 28, and his only son Philip, killed in action in Italy in 1944. His eldest daughter, Marjorie, became Head Mistress of Edgbaston Church of England College and, in her retirement, has returned to live in St.Agnes Road. She is a member of the church council in its centenary year. Claude Going died on St.Peter's Day 1947, after 48 years in the ministry and still fondly remembered by many of St.Agnes' congregation."

Claude married Muriel Catherine Murray-Browne, daughter of Rev. C.C. Murray-Browne and Unknown, in 1905 in Gloucester.