Charles Ingham Black, died 1896

According the website of the Burley Local History Group, Charles Ingham Black was born in Sligo in 1821. An Irish Anglican, he was educated at Trinity College Dublin and in 1855 he was installed as the curate of Burley in Wharfedale. Harry Speight, in his book Upper Wharfedale (1900) records family links with Lord Palmerston. He apparently also enjoyed ‘very kindly and intimate relations with the late Princess Alice’ when in 1867–8 he acted as English Chaplain in the German spa town of Darmstadt.

For forty years he remained Vicar of Burley and saw many changes in the village. The parish church was refurbished in the 1870s, the mills prospered, the population grew and he kept records of the changes brought about in the National School in Back Lane. He himself contributed to the growth in population and the census records show that he and his wife Anne had eleven children in Burley. At least one of his children died young and was buried in the grave where he would eventually be laid himself. A daughter, Chrissie Dora, died on 28 December 1860, aged 10 weeks.

According to Speight, Black was a ‘student all his life, an excellent theologian and classical scholar, and a writer of prose and verse.’ He composed a number of carols and his memorial window in the church features scenes from the nativity. He died in Burley on 29 June 1896, aged 74.

Photographer unidentified.