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Waters Upton churchyard MIs: Hatton
Added October 2023:
SACRED TO THE MEMORY
OF THE
REVD. THOS. HATTON
[On left:]
RECTOR
OF THIS PARISH
[43] YEARS
[On right:]
DIED
MAY 18TH. 1807,
AGED 72
Writing in 1897, the Rev. G. H. F. Vane, Rector of Wem, described Thomas Hatton (in On the Parish Registers of Waters Upton) as “a more grandiloquent successor” of an earlier rector of the parish, John Tourneour. Yet he also noted that during “Hatton’s long reign,” (which began in 1764 and lasted for 43 years), “Clear is his caligraphy, and most careful are his entries.”
Vane also added: “the present rector informs me that this Thomas Hatton was a remarkable man, and a devoted parish priest. Village tradition yet recalls how evil boys would pilfer his wig and his cane, and how in the absence of she-bears he himself would pursue these youths ‘trium literarum’ along the street; and this when he kept a free day school, and himself was their Orbilius.”
Thomas was a son of the Rev Alexander and Mary Hatton, and was baptised with his brother Samuel at Shrewsbury on 18 October 1735. He was educated at Shrewsbury School, and afterwards admitted (on 26 January 1753, aged 17) to St John’s College, Cambridge where he obtained his BA in 1757. He was ordained deacon in 1758, and priest in 1760. Before his induction as rector of Waters Upton, he was curate of Haddon in Huntingdonshire.
Thomas married Leonora Boys, by licence, in the bride’s parish of Shrewsbury St Alkmond on 12 December 1765. Both parties signed the register (as did witnesses Francis Hatton and John Dod). It seems the couple did not have any children.
As Thomas died intestate, administration of his estate was granted to his widow. Leonora was also buried at Waters Upton, on 4 February 1814; her age was recorded as 93.
Brasses taken from tombstones on the floor of the old church and mounted on a tablet on the South wall of the new (current) church include one each for Thomas and Leonora; see MIs on East and South church walls.
Waters Upton One-Place Study 