John Stedwell Stansfeld and Headington
Left: A blue plaque was dedicated to John Stansfeld on 26 June 2009.
It can be seen on the wall of the former Rectory of St Ebbe's Church in Paradise Square (now part of Cherwell College).
John Stedwell Stansfeld (1854–1939) was born in Camberwell/Walworth in Surrey.
At the time of the 1861 census Stansfeld (5) was living at 124 Bishopsgate Street in Cornhill, Middlesex with his parents Alfred & Eliza Stansfeld and his three older siblings (all born in Richmond, Surrey): Lucy (14), Fanny (11), and Alfred (8), and one younger brother also born at Walworth: Josiah (2). His father (38) is described as a "housekeeper".
Stansfeld left school at the age of 15 to work in an engineering office. After several jobs in the City, he entered the Civil Service, for whom he was to work for 30 years.
In 1877 the Civil Service transferred Stansfeld to their Oxford office. He decided to study Medicine in his spare time, and became a non-collegiate member of the University of Oxford. On 4 November 1886 he was matriculated by Exeter College, and was awarded his BA on 6 July 1889.
The 1891 census shows Stansfeld (35) living at 67 Banbury Road in Oxford with his widowed mother Eliza (70) and his sister Jessie (28). He is descrbied as "Officer of Inland Revenue 2 Class", while his sister is a "Pharmaceutical student".
Stansfeld sat his first MB examination in 1893. After a period working in Glasgow and London, he qualified at Charing Cross Hospital, and in 1897 founded the Oxford Medical Mission in Bermondsey, where, as a condition for receiving free medical treatment, young men and boys were asked to attend a Bible Class on the following Sunday. The 1901 census shows him as a single man of 45 living in Bermondsey and described as "Physician & Surgeon, Oxford Medical Mission".
In 1902 Stansfeld married Janet Marples, and continued to earn his living by day as a clerk in the Civil Service. In 1909 he decided to take Orders, and by 1910 he was Vicar of St Anne's in Bermondsey. The 1911 census shows Stansfeld (55) living at 5a Thorburn Square, Bermondsey and described as a medical pracitioner and well as a clerk in holy orders with his son John Gordon Stansfeld (7) who was privately tutored at home, and a cook and a housemaid. His wife was not at home on census night.
Stansfeld had to leave London because of his children’s ill-health and was Vicar of St Ebbe’s from 1912 to 1926. He organized clubs and helped the unemployed of the area, but it was the death of his wife Janet (who died of influenza at the age of 47 and was buried at St Ebbe's Church on 2 November 1918) that led to his connection with Headington. He used the money that they had been saving for a trip to the Holy Land to buy 20 acres of land off Quarry Road to give the children from the St Ebbe’s slums a chance of camping in the countryside at the weekend. This land, which he called St Ebba's after his church, is now known as the Stansfeld Centre.
Stansfeld started off with a tree-house called the Crow’s Nest. Later he installed some rough huts or bungalows where whole families from St Ebbe’s could go for a country holiday but which would allow the breadwinner to walk each day down to his work back home in Oxford. G. A. Coppock & B. M. Hill wrote in 1933:
What was once the scene of the traditional industries of the village, stone-quarrying and brickfields, and until recently known as the 'Clayhills', was purchased by the Rev. Dr. J. S. Stansfeld of Oxford and named St. Ebba's.
Amateur labour has erected a small chapel at the southern end of it. Here and there are temporary dwelling-houses which were put up to help families in difficulty during the housing shortage. While Dr. Stansfeld was in Oxford, St. Ebba's was the happy hunting-ground of Boy Scouts from the more crowded parts of Oxford. Schoolboys from London were allowed to camp there. Tired mothers from the Friars (Oxford) came there to fill their lungs with the health-giving air without the fatigue of climbing the hill to the plain above.
When Dr. Stansfeld left Oxford the land was rented by the Birmingham Education Committee for the purpose of establishing an open-air or camp-school for delicate children of the Birmingham schools.
The men of Quarry parish built for the children a small chapel with a thatched roof in Quarry Road near the vicarage. This chapel was known as St Ebba’s and the postcard below (postmarked 2 July 1943) shows its interior. It was demolished in the 1950s.
Stansfeld left St Ebbe’s Church in 1926 at the age of 72, and after three years in Kenya setting up a mission school was given a country living in Spelsbury in 1929.
Through his work with the church, Stansfeld had made contact with the Parish of St Saviour’s in Birmingham, and the boys of Birmingham were able to come and enjoy the same facilities as the children of St Ebbe's. In 1933 he decided to give the land to Birmingham.
Stansfeld died in 1939 at the age of 85. The land he bought in Headington Quarry is still used by Birmingham Education Authority, and is now known as the Stansfeld Field Study Centre.
Stansfeld is commemorated in the street name Stansfeld Place (and possibly also in the variantly spelled Stansfield Close).
Website of Stansfeld Field Study Centre
Biography of John Stansfeld on Infed site (includes bibliography)
Above: The house called St Ebba's on Old Road in December 2008 has kept alive the old chapel name, but it is due to be demolished and replaced by nine new dwellings.
