The Reverend Richard Arnold Edgell MA was the Founding Chaplain of the Lodge and Worshipful Deputy Master in 1919.
He was born in India and survived the Siege of Lucknow as a child before being sent back to Wellington in 1870, and was in the Hill. He was a member of the hunt along with future fellow Lodge member the Revd Manley Power (shown standing forth from the left in the above photograph). He was another of the eleven brethren of the Lodge over the years to be Head of College, this time in 1875.
After leaving Wellington he went up to Univ, where he did “passably well” in maths and classics before hitting his stride and taking a first in Natural Sciences. He went down to Westminster to teach and in 1892 took holy orders. He was the first Housemaster of Ashburnham from 1883 0 1893. He continued teaching, becoming headmaster of Leamington College in 18931 and Sywell House School in Llandudno, before departing academia and moving to Beckley in Sussex as rector, where he managed to combine his pastoral activities with his passion for golf. He was also a keen cricketer, but the records of the Masters and Boys match at Westminster suggest that enthusiasm rather than ability was the driver here. He batted 11th and was out for 1. He did not bowl…
He was initiated into and was a past master of the White Horse of Kent Lodge No 1506. As a school master and later vicar, like his military brethren, his masonry was at the beck and call of his schools and parishes. Kent provided him with his mother lodge, the White Horse of Kent Lodge, and this survived his Westminster teaching days, but when he moved to Leamington and Llandudno it proved to be too far to travel so he joined Shakespeare Lodge No 284 in Leamington and then St Trillo Lodge No 2569 in Wales. He was also a Past Provincial Grand Chaplain in Warwickshire.
He was married in quite some ceremony in April 1888 in Westminster Abbey to Diana, the daughter of Surgeon-General Sir Joseph Frayer Bart.
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