Holy Trinity Street and Walton

George Herbert Wippell Mallett was born around 1874. He was a clever young man, winning an Exhibition (a junior scholarship) to Cambridge. He studied at Emmanuel College for the Moral Sciences Tripos (Tripos is a traditional Cambridge word for the exams, which at one time were taken sitting on a three-legged stool - or so one is told. The Moral Sciences course included Philosophy, Logic, History and Economics.). After winning his Exhibition he might have been expected to do well in his degree, but when he graduated in 1894 he managed only a Third.

He attended in 1894 what was known as the Cambridge Clergy Training School. This eventually became Wescott House, a highly respected Theological College, many of whose students have gone on to become bishops. In 1894 it had no buildings. The Wescott House website tells of the aims of the Clergy Training School.

Brooke Foss Westcott (1825-1901), Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge in 1870, was concerned with the standard of theological education within the universities, as well as the wider church. Westcott was concerned not purely with theology as an academic discipline, but was also keen to make connections between academic theology and the society in which the Church ministered. He wrote to Professor F.D. Maurice in 1871 that without some such application of theology to life, our scheme will be very imperfect, and it will be an inestimable gain to the students preparing for Holy Orders if they can from the first be taught to feel that Social Morality is one side of the doctrine of the Church.

In 1881 Westcott convened a committee to assist both Graduates and Undergraduates who were seeking ordination but who wished to remain close to Cambridge University. In their objective of preparing candidates for ordination, the committee was assisted by a variety of Cambridge colleges. Regular services were held for those assisted by the committee, but they were also instructed to attend their relevant college chapel as well, all students at that time also being members of the University. The scheme proposed by the committee commenced in the Lent Term of 1881. Such was the genesis of what was known as the Cambridge Clergy Training School.

The syllabus that the committee undertook to teach included Christian doctrine, social economics and its relation to morality, homiletics and pastoral theology and practice. Nine bachelor students were admitted, with the first prospectus being published four years later. Kings College gave permission for a weekly Eucharist to be held in the Brassey Chapel of the College Chapel.

In 1895 George Mallett was ordained Deacon to be Curate of Staple Fitzpaine. (Old picture of the church) He cannot have been overworked in such a small place (population around 150 in A.D. 2000), and the same year, 1895, he moved to Street.

He stayed in Street until 1900. After five years as a Curate he might have expected a parish of his own, but in those days there was more competition for parishes, and he moved to Weston-super-Mare for another six years as Curate, until at last he was offered the post of Vicar of Cannington. He stayed there from 1906 to 1921, and added the duties of Assistant Diocesan Inspector of Schools in 1911.

Moving to Chard in 1921 he had to relinquish the schools job. He was still in Chard in 1930. He was made a Prebendary, and the church in Chard now has a carved screen at its west end in his memory.