Reverend George Bridges Lewis Vicar of Kemsing

Kemsing was from the fifteenth Century a church with a curate; the Vicar of Seal lived at Seal and had responsibility for supervising curates at Kemsing. This arrangement changed in 1874 when Reverend George Bridges Lewis was appointed Vicar.
George Bridges Lewis was born on 5 March 1824 at The Close Salisbury Wiltshire.He was the only son of  William Wiliam Lewis of Woburn Place London. He was privately baptised on 14 March 1824 at his grandfather's home and his baptism is recorded in the register of  Saint Andrew Holborn London.
He is found in the 1841 census of Bradford Wiltshire to be a pupil of the Reverend James Bliss. He was later educated at Eton before entering Oriel College Oxford earning a BA in 1846 deacon in 1849 and was ordained to the priesthood in 1850 at Winchester by the Archbishop of Canterbury Doctor John Bird Sumner. He gained his MA in 1853 at Oxford.
I first encountered his entries in Sundridge registers he served as curate at Sundridge from 1849-1852. Before his arrival he had married Mary  Rebecca Madeline Sutherland on 8 June 1848 at Croydon.Sadly Mary died on 17 November 1850 at Hastings Sussex. He was to remarry twice again.
From 1853-1857 he was curate at Malden in Surrey and his entry in the 1851 census suggests that he lived there with the Vicar Reverend William C Stapylton Vicar of Malden cum Chassington.George is recorded as a visitor in the census and described as Curate in that parish.
In 1857 and until 1875 he was Perpetual Curate of Northaw Hertfordshire and in 1873 he became Vicar of Kemsing.
In the Kemsing burial register there are two unique entries
interment of combatants from the battles of Otford
the extraordinary baptism of a deceased infant
He died aged 80 in 1905 at The Close Salisbury in Wiltshire and was buried  on 13 January 1905 at Salisbury Cathedral.

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