The Reverend Cheverton Shrewsbury, MA
(Photo by permission of St Andrew's Church)
(Photo by permission of St Andrew's Church)
For a remarkable period of eighty-one years (1873 -1954) the church at Thringstone was served by just two ministers, the Reverend E S Crane and his eventual son-in-law, the Reverend C Shrewsbury. For these eight decades the affairs of the church were centered not only around them but also to a great extent around the members of their families, families united as one by marriage.
The departure of Cheverton Shrewsbury in September 1954 truly marked the end of an era at Thringstone, concluding a personal ministry in the village of some forty-six years and also severing a dynastic tie with the vicarage which stretched back to mid-Victorian origins. As such, it ended an era during which the first generation of church faithfuls in Thringstone had all died out and during which the golden presence of the Booth family had come and gone. Mr Shrewsbury had been the final thread linking the old world to changing times and there must doubtless have prevailed immense reflection and an air of uncertainty during the subsequent interregnum. Indeed, by 1954, the physical and social character of the village itself was poised to change substantially, with the beginnings of large scale housing development, characterised by homogeneous estates and accordant immigration, which has since effectively transformed Thringstone from a predominantly rural parish into a geographical and political conurbation of Coalville. The decision by Mr Shrewsbury to retire was a reluctant one, forced by great age, which had incurred a measure of forgetfulness and inevitable personal limitations.
On Easter day 1954, Mr Shrewsbury collapsed during the early morning service of Holy Communion and was only able to complete the service by following the prompts of his son, Charles, who joined him in the sanctuary. For the next few months, services were taken by a string of lay readers and the Whitwick curate based at Broom Leys. Mr Shrewsbury attended his last service at Thringstone Church on the first Sunday of September 1954, at the eleven o'clock service of matins, when members of the RAOB were present. Here, Mr Shrewsbury was only able to say the blessing, "but he said it as beautifully and sincerely as ever, wrote his son, and the Buffaloes and the rest of us were so moved by it". The Coalville Times of 3rd September 1954 noted that Mr Shrewsbury had held the record for length of service in a single parish throughout the diocese. Through the influence of his warden, Mr Bill Brooks, a solicitor in the Crane practice, Mr Shrewsbury acquired a retirement home at Long Eaton, where he was joined by his sister, Nell, and his housekeeper, Miss Norah Burton. One of his life-long parishioners, Mr Bill Smith, who continued to visit him regularly at his new home, holds tender memories of the old vicar here. On these visits, Mr Shrewsbury would gently explain of how he passed the time, by lying quietly and thinking about 'Old Thringstone', which for the greater part of half a century had been his life.
Mr Shrewsbury's successor at Saint Andrews, the Reverend L J Chesterman, also paid regular visits and in a recent letter to the author he wrote, 'One morning I said to my wife, 'I must go and see Mr Shrewsbury today, I must go'. So I went and was with him when he died. That was March 5th 1958. Mr Shrewsbury was aged eighty-five years. He was laid to rest in Thringstone churchyard, next to the grave of Charles and Mary Booth.
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