Edward Caswall: School, University & Ordination

Contributed by Valerie Kerslake for St Peter's Church Millennium Festival, 2000

Edward Caswall was educated at Marlborough Grammar School and then Brasenose College, Oxford, where he was a Hulme exhibitioner and received a university prize for poetry. He was known at Oxford as a humorous, witty and talented writer. He graduated in 1836, took Holy Orders in 1838 and in 1840 became perpetual curate at Stratford-sub-Castle, just north of Salisbury. He may well have been familiar with the parish already as it had been in the diocese of his great-uncle, Thomas Burgess, Bishop of Salisbury, until his death three years earlier. Indeed at Stratford-sub-Castle Edward was only some 15 miles from his parents at West Lavington. Edward's eldest brother, the Revd Henry Caswall, later became Prebendary of Salisbury Cathedral in 1860.

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