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1945-1947 - Reverend Jeffrey Graham Jeffreys

Vicar%20Jeffreys1.jpgRev. Jeffreys was appointed on 27th October 1945 but was only here for a short time before he left the county due to poor health.  He was baptised at St Bartholomew’s, Norwood, Adelaide, South Australia on 12th December 1893, the son of John Edwin and Amy Pauline Jeffreys, and became an assistant teacher at Melbourne Grammar School.

During the First World War he was a Gunner in the Australian Field Artillery Brigade and embarked for Europe from Melbourne on 11th May 1917 aboard HMAT ‘Shropshire’.  Towards the end of the War he was commissioned as an officer in the Australian Flying Corps.

He later taught chemistry at Westminster School, took a second degree at Christ Church, Oxford and then taught at Radley School, near Oxford. On 20th July 1938 he was granted a certificate, at Brooklands Flying Club, Surrey, to fly the Tiger Moth/Gipsy Moth.  At that time he was Headmaster of Ottershaw College, Surrey and had been from its foundation in 1932.  This was a progressive school with a philosophy (the Dalton Plan, from Dalton High School, Massachusetts) that he had previously used at Bryanston School, Dorset (which Jeffreys had founded in 1928 and resigned from in 1931).  Numbers at Ottershaw rose to 123 by 1937, but in that year government inspectors were fairly critical about the school and were not at all favourably impressed by the headmaster. For a short time the school was very successful, but eventually became insolvent in 1937.  The School was saved for 2 years by financial help, but Rev. Jeffreys moved to Fulham as a preacher in April 1939 and the College closed at the outbreak of War.

He was Vicar of St Mary the Virgin, Tottenham, London, during the War years of 1940 – 45.  His church suffered some damage from enemy action, particularly with a near miss from a V1 flying bomb.  After his time at Wickhamford he was at one point Vicar at Chesterton with Wendlebury, Oxfordshire (1953-59).   He died in Bournemouth, Dorset in 1977.

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