Charles Pierrepont Edwards, 1898–1946
The Reverend Charles Pierrepont Edwards served as vicar of West Mersea from 1898 until 1946. Islanders knew him as “Old Spiery”. He had previously served with the Essex Yeomanry during the Boer War.
His work extended beyond the church: after the First World War he resumed duties as clerk to West Mersea Parish Council. This was the period in which the village began to change rapidly, with increasing building and more visitors travelling to the island.
Gallipoli and the Military Cross
Edwards joined the Army as a chaplain during the First World War and served at Gallipoli. In April 1916, newspapers reported that he had received the Military Cross after leading a party to bring wounded soldiers under fire back to British lines.
The rescue was described in a contemporary newspaper report about the vicar of West Mersea, who was already known as the “fighting parson”. Read the April 1916 newspaper report.
Parish life and wartime service at home
Edwards returned to West Mersea after his Army service. His wife Nancy (Annie Hay Cook) served in the Voluntary Aid Detachment at Gostwycke hospital in Colchester from 23 November 1914 until 6 June 1918. Her Red Cross record lists night nursing and temporary acting-quartermaster duties. She was awarded the Red Cross medal at Colchester Town Hall in 1922.
Edwards remained vicar throughout the Second World War. He retired in 1946, after 48 years at St Peter and St Paul's.
The Old Spiery memoir
Mary R. Stevens wrote Old Spiery — Mersea’s Fighting Parson, first published in 1983. A revised edition appeared in 2009. The book covers Edwards’s military service and his life as the village vicar.
Stevens was a Mersea Museum archivist. In 1985 Dennis Chatters interviewed her for Lions Talking Magazine number 86; her eighteen-minute recording discusses Edwards’s character as well as the book. It provides a local recollection of the vicar distinct from the wartime newspaper accounts of his military service.
Nancy Edwards’s wartime hospital service · St Peter and St Paul’s Church
Mersea Museum oral-history catalogue, Mary Stevens interview (1985)