Reverend Gavin Carlyle

Born in Paisley in Renfrewshire in or about 1828, a nephew of the Scottish clergyman Edward Irving, Gavin Carlyle came to London from Edinburgh in the early 1860s in order to establish a Presbyterian church in Kensington. Situated on the corner of Scarsdale Villas and Allen Street, the church opened in 1863. From 1887 onwards it was known as St John’s, until in 1975 the building was sold to the Coptic Orthodox Church, who renamed it St Mark’s.

In 1869 Gavin Carlyle married Margaret Macpherson in Kensington. The couple appear on the 1871 census living at 9 St Philip’s Terrace in Kensington with a cook and a domestic servant. For his profession, Gavin described himself as ‘Presbyterian Minister / Kensington Presb. Church.’

In 1901 the couple were living at 1 Emanuel Avenue in Acton. Also present on the night of the census were their 25-year-old daughter Jessie and Margaret’s brother, Duncan Macpherson, an ‘Agent [of the] Royal Exchange Insurance [Company].’

In 1911 they were living at 36 Mount Park Road in Ealing. The household included their 39-year-old son, Edward Irving Carlyle, who was a historian, a Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, and the assistant-editor of the Dictionary of National Biography.

Reverend Gavin Carlyle died, aged 91, on 15 February 1919 at 6 Bardwell Road, Oxford. He left effects valued at £6878.

Photographed by Camille Silvy of London on 11 May 1866.