Isaac Gossett, Founder of St
Mary’s School
Isaac Gossett is perhaps best remembered as the vicar who galvanised
the local gentry into raising the funds to establish the village’s Church of
England school in a new building. This is still in use as St Mary’s Primary
School though greatly extended from its original one room. In 1814 he was
appointed vicar in strange and difficult circumstances, when Datchet was at a
very low ebb indeed. The village was known locally as ‘Black Datchet’ and
1813 was the year of the riots over a quarrel between the curate and the parish
clerk. The previous vicar, Rev. Foster Piggott, had eventually resigned after
years of absenteeism, playing little role in the life of the parish.
Datchet had suffered from a series of vicars who were barely adequate for
the post and sometimes a positive danger to the moral wellbeing of the
inhabitants. This was due to the fact that the ‘living’ was so poor that
better calibre candidates would not take it. St George’s Chapel in Windsor was
responsible for appointing vicars from the Minor Canons of the Chapel, as their
right and as a reward, but at the end of 1813, when the vicar of Datchet
resigned, none of them would accept the job. It fell to Canon Northey to suggest
a candidate from outside, and he presented Isaac Gossett, who was already curate
at Windsor parish church. In 1818 Queen Charlotte appointed him as chaplain to
the Royal household at Windsor castle, a well paid post he continued to serve in
through to Victoria’s reign. From 1821 he was also vicar of the newly rebuilt
parish church in Windsor but seems to have managed all his responsibilities with
energy and success, and with the help of able curates.
He came from a very well educated background as his father, also Isaac
Gosset, was a scholar and book-collector of considerable reputation and some
wealth. Gosset lived at the old vicarage just behind Datchet’s church (later
demolished), with his wife Dorothea and several children. Although he rebuilt
the vicarage at Windsor he appears not to have moved there, as he was recorded
as living in Datchet in the censuses of 1841 and 1851. He lived in the original
vicarage, which was much nearer the church than the grand new one built by the
next vicar in the 1860s when the old house was demolished.
Census 1851 Datchet Vicarage
Rev Isaac Gosset
head
age 68
born in London
Dorothea Gosset
wife
age 63
born in Windsor
Anna Gosset
dau.
age 32
born in Datchet
Louisa Gosset
dau
age 30
born in Datchet
Marion Gosset
dau.
age 29
born in Datchet
Richard Thomas
servant age
22
born in Eton
Sophie Pagwith
servant
age 31
born in Tilehurst
Elizabeth Earl
servant age
27
born in Rickmansworth
Once Gossett was installed, he took charge in no uncertain terms. He
officiated at all baptisms, marriages and burials, which the curate had been
conducting for some years, and became chairman of the vestry meetings which had
been run by the churchwardens. In Windsor he was prominent in the move to
provide gas streetlighting in 1828, and in Datchet he lent £100 to the Barker
Bridge House Trust to complete the underground drainage channel in the village
centre; clearly a man interested in and actively promoting modernisation and
philanthropic improvements.
Two examples of his interest in the people he served are found in the Windsor
and Eton Express. In 1815 Gossett accepted membership of the Vaccination
Institution on behalf of Datchet parish, to inoculate the poor and circulate
information to combat ignorance about the treatment. Then in 1817 he advertised
for a Mistress for the Parish School: A
steady woman, not under 30 years of age, capable of instructing children in
Reading, Working (ie sewing) and Knitting. A school for the poor had already
been in existence for some time, in an old house on the site of the present Bank
House and then in part of the Manor House before its restoration, but here it
can be seen that Gossett was trying
to employ somebody more capable. The limited curriculum was typical of education
for the poor at that time, little more than a typical ‘dame school’.
Then in 1841 Parliament passed an Act giving favourable terms to
landowners who would give land for the building of new elementary schools, in a
drive to improve the education of the poor. Isaac Gossett was the instigator of
local fundraising to build on a piece of land given by the Duke of Buccleuch and
his heir Lord Montagu of Beaulieu. One donation, of £20, came from Queen
Victoria’s mother, Victoria of Saxe-Coburg.
The newspaper reported at its opening on 20th November 1843:
On Monday last, the Infant School at Datchet was opened for the free
instruction of the poor of that village. The Inhabitants feel themselves greatly
indebted to the Rev. Isaac Gossett for the establishment of this charitable
organisation, through whose strenuous exertions, aided by liberal donations and
subscriptions of the local gentry, so laudable and desirable an object has been
accomplished.
Although the school was already opened, the actual land conveyance deed
was signed in 1844. It states that the school should be:
Under the management, control and inspection of the Vicar of the
Parish, to be used for the purpose of educating the children of poor persons in
the Parish according to the Principles of the Established Church of England, and
for no other purpose.
Isaac Gossett died aged 72 in 1855, leaving a flourishing school as his
legacy to the village. His
successor, Rev F. U. Hall, turned his sights instead to the long-overdue
rebuilding of the church, an activity which was reaching its peak all over the
country. Gosset and his family are buried in a prominent tomb of pink granite
near the northern edge of Datchet’s churchyard. It commemorates his own
thirty-eight years as Vicar of Datchet, his wife who died in 1863 and a son,
William, who had died aged three in 1828. His mother, Catherine, is also buried
there; she died in 1831 aged eighty-three. Inside the church, near the door in
the south aisle, there is a memorial plaque to his grand daughter Henrikka
Gosset who died at Portslade in 1878. She must have been the daughter of
Isaac’s eldest son (whose name is not known), and apparently the only one of
his children who produced a family. The fact that his family continued to place
memorials in the church at Datchet so long after his death suggests that Isaac
Gosset must have felt particularly attached to the village even though he had
other, and more prestigious, connections.