Henry Gascelyn Levett

From Aristopaedia, the free, crowd-sourced encyclopaedia of the gentry, knightage, baronetage, and peerage, sponsored by Cokayne’s and Black’s

The Revd Professor Henry Gerald Gascelyn Levett MA (Cantab) MSt (Cantab) PhD (Cantab) FRSA FRHistS RIBA, commonly called ‘HGL’, born 12 June 1957, is an English priest of the Church of England, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, an architect and expert in church architecture and restoration, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a Fellow of Clare College Cantab. He is a curate in the Combined Benefice of The Woolfonts, Somerfords, & Harstbournes (The Woolfonts (Woolfont Magna, Woolfont Crucis with Woolfont Parva, & Woolfont Abbas with Wolfdown) with The Somerfords (Somerford Mally with Somerford Canons alias  Canonicorum, Somerford Tout Saints with Lamsford, Cliff Ambries with Shifford Ombres and Combe Woddley als  Waddlycombe) and Harstbournes (Chalford Mallet with Hawksbourne, Harstbourne Fitzwarren with Harstbourne Sallis and Harstbourne Fratrum als  Friars), in Wiltshire; with particular responsibility for the Downlands parishes and their repair and restoration.

Life
‘HGL’, as he is universally known, is the third son of four born to Professor Geoffrey Gascelyn Hungerford Levett PhD FRIBA, Fellow of King’s College Cantab and formerly one of the MFAA ‘Monuments Men’ during and after the Hitler War, and his wife Lady Violet Meynell-Levett, daughter of Francis Hugo Godfrey, Lord Wanlip, and his baroness Evelyn Alice, daughter of Sir Simon Warmestre MFH. He is thus a distant cousin to Gerald ‘Boxy’ Warmestre MFH, Master of the Shepton Hunt, whose grandmother on his mother’s side had been a Meynell, and her mother, a Levett of what might be called the Quorn branch. HGL’s family has, consequently, roots in the West Country as well as in ‘the shires’; and like the young Betjeman, HGL spent many boyhood holidays pottering about West Country churches.

Having been at school at Rugby, the young HGL went up to Cambridge, where, as an undergraduate at Selwyn, he read Theology and Architecture. He then remained ensconced at that university, taking further degrees and holding academic posts at Emmanuel and then at Clare, of which he became a Fellow. The noiseless tenor of his academic way was disturbed only by the death, in 1983, of his wife and infant son in a road smash outside Fen Ditton in a heavy Autumn fog.

As HGL began to contemplate retirement from full-time academic work, his old friend, the Very Revd Dr Simon Blanchard, Dean Emeritus of Sarum and Rural Dean of Wolfdown, suggested to him that he avail himself, as an Oxbridge Fellow, of the provisions of Canon C 5 of the Church of England, and apply to take orders. Dean Blanchard’s goal, which was accordingly realised, was that HGL should become Canon Paddick’s fourth curate in the newly expanded Combined Benefice, and take on special responsibility for the restoration of the fabric of the Downlands parish churches.

HGL was ordained to the diaconate and immediately, pursuant to Canon C 3.7 and a faculty from the Archbishop of Canterbury, to the priesthood, by the Bishop of Ely on Michaelmas, 2015, at Great S Mary in Cambridge, the University Church; and he removed to the Old Vicarage, Harstbourne Fitzwarren, in the next succeeding Easter Term.

Family
Fr HGL is the widower of the late Anne Lavinia Fellowes-Ferrar, who, with their infant son Nicholas Julian Edward, was killed in a motor smash on the A14 in 1983.

All three of his brothers: Geoffrey, a City banker; Hugo, an academic in the United States; and Simon, a documentary film-maker currently based in Ireland: are living as of 2017.

Career
Fr HGL as an academic was a lecturer, professor, and eventually a Fellow at Emmanuel and then at Clare Colleges, Cambridge. Since taking Orders, he has a served as a curate in the Combined Benefice of The Woolfonts, Somerfords, & Harstbournes, Wilts. As an architect, he has consulted upon numerous projects in the Diocese of Ely, at the University of Cambridge, and, since, in the Diocese of Salisbury.

Publications
Fr HGL, as the acknowledged authority on ecclesiastical architecture since the death of Sir Ninian Comper, is a much-published scholar.

Select Bibliography
Certain Commonalities in the Wool Churches of East Anglia and of the West Country

Thomas Sumsion and the Gothic Survival

Dowbiggin and Ecclesiastical Architecture

Clouds of Witness Above the Fray: The Angel Roofs of East Anglia and the Defeat of the Iconoclasts

Marriage
To the late Anne Lavinia, in 1982.