Subject

The founding vicar of St Michael & All Angels Church in Bedford Park in 1887. On his wife's page we list their 3 sons, lost serving their country.

Whilst researching their son, Harold, our colleague Andrew Behan, discovered that he was baptised by his own father, Alfred, who was a Clerk in Holy Orders, at St Michael and All Angels Church. This would have been in the first St Michael & All Angels church which was a temporary iron structure in a market garden on Chiswick High Road, facing the top of Chiswick Lane and inaugurated in 1876. The family were living at 2 Woodstock Road, Bedford Park, Chiswick and they were still here at the time of the 1881 census.

Andrew Behan has kindly carried out some research on this man: Alfred Wilson was born on 31 July 1843 in St Martin in the Fields, Westminster, the younger son of George Wilson and Sophia Alice Wilson, née Pennington. His father was a Wholesale Stationer. He was baptised on 6 September 1843 in the church of St Martin in the Fields. The 1851 census shows him living at 'The Lawns', Balham, with his widowed mother who was living off an annuity and his two older sisters.

On 13 January 1876 he married Fanny Cobbe at the St John the Evangelist Church, Hammersmith. He was by this time a Clerk in Holy Orders. Together they had five sons born between 1877 and 1888. He became the first incumbent of St Michael's and all Angels Church when it was inaugurated in 1876, a temporary iron structure in a market garden on Chiswick High Road facing the top of Chiswick Lane. He soon started fund-raising for the present permanent church and the foundation stone was laid by his wife on 31 May 1879. It was consecrated by the Bishop of London on 17 April 1880.

On the day of its consecration, a letter addressed to the Bishop of London was printed in the Acton, Chiswick & Turnham Green Gazette, accusing Reverend Wilson of “Popish and Pagan mummeries”. Signed by Henry Smith, churchwarden of Chiswick, it listed his supposed transgressions: marching in procession round the church, prostrating himself before the consecrated elements, making the sign of the cross when giving the elements to the people and singing the Agnus Dei. The controversy raged for months in the paper, which sent its own reporter who observed that the service was very “high” and reminiscent of a Roman Catholic Church.

The 1881 census shows them living at 2 Woodstock Road, Bedford Park, Chiswick and the 1891 census at The Vicarage of St Michael's and All Angels Church, Priory Gardens, Chiswick. The 1901 census shows him still at this address. He died on 4 August 1909 at St Thomas Home, St Thomas Hospital, Lambeth and probate records show that his normal residence had been 8 Abingdon Gardens, Kensington. Probate was granted to his widow and two sons, C.E.A. Wilson, surgeon and A.C. Wilson, solicitor. His estate totalled £44,315-19-10d.