Reverend and Mrs Charles Snepp

A carte-de-visite portrait of Reverend Charles Busbridge Snepp (1823-1880), seen here with his wife Julia Anne née Winfield. Reverend Snepp was Vicar of Perry Barr, near Birmingham, from 1851 until his death in 1880.

Born in 1823, Charles Busbridge Snepp was the second son of Thomas Snepp of Henly-in-Arden. His mother was the daughter of Sir Henry Wakeman, Bart. He took his degree at Cambridge and was ordained in 1846 as curate to the Reverend George Lea, incumbent of Christ Church, Birmingham. In 1851, after five years with Mr Lea, he was appointed to the sole charge of Perry Barr. The following year he married Julia Anne Winfield of Birmingham; the marriage produced one daughter.

At the time of the 1871 census, Snepp, his wife, and their daughter Emily were living at Perry Villa in Perry Barr. Mrs Snepp had eight servants and a governess to run her household. Also present on the night of the census was the poet and hymn writer Frances Ridley Havergal. In November 1871 Snepp published Songs of grace and glory for private, family, and public worship: Hymnal treasures of the Church of Christ, from the sixth to the nineteenth century. Containing 1025 hymns, the book was the result of thirty years work.

Reverend Snepp died in 1880, aged 57. According to The Gospel Magazine (June 1962): ‘For over twenty-eight years he was indefatigable in the work of his parish, and his labours were blessed of God. After death he left the parish with a beautiful church, three times enlarged. He built schools for boys and infants. He provided a Coffee House, where many once drunkards or godless were born again and made new men by God.’

Photographed in 1861 by Hennah and Kent of Brighton.

From an album compiled by Augustus Cholmondeley Gough-Calthorpe (1829-1910), 6th Baron Calthorpe from 1893.