Lives in Cricket No 45 - Brief Candles 2

101 Mary Louisa Edwards, the daughter of the late Dean of Bangor in North Wales, and niece of the Bishop of St Asaph (later the first Archbishop of Wales). Like many another Green-Price, he had done well in his marriage; it is variously reported that his bride ‘had £800 a year’, or in some sources £1,500. The marriage was at St Asaph in Denbighshire, and was evidently a highlight of the year in this small city, which was reportedly ‘en fete’ for the occasion. 74 Alfred and May (as she was known) had three daughters: Enid (1894- 1957), Sylvia (1896-1933) and Monica (1907-1980). A fourth daughter was stillborn in 1898. 75 It seems to have been a very happy marriage, and when May died unexpectedly in 1922, following an operation in Bristol, Alfred was devastated. Even some years later there was reference to him still only making ‘a slow recovery’. Although he stayed in Tarrington for a few more years, one may surmise that May’s death was the first step in the process that led him, finally, to return to his home church at Norton in 1925. After leaving Tarrington he arranged for a rood beam to be erected in the church there, bearing the inscription ‘To the glory of God and in loving memory of Mary Louisa, wife of Alfred Edward Green Price, Rector of Tarrington, who died September 17th 1922’. The beam is still in place today at the entrance to the chancel. 74 Among the wedding presents reported in the local press were a leather cricket bag from his brother Whitmore, and a picture of WG Grace from the choir of his church at Ashtead. 75 Although contemporary sources suggest the girls had a happy childhood at Tarrington, some of their later lives were less happy. Enid married a naval officer in 1921; the marriage was childless. Sylvia had also married a naval man in the previous year; they had a son and a daughter, but she took her own life on a railway track in Kent in 1933. In due course her widowed husband remarried, but he was lost in the sinking of HMS Hermes in 1942. Monica’s life was blighted by personal problems. She eventually married at the age of 62, to a man who (I was told) she had met in a psychiatric hospital. The oldest of them all Gone but not forgotten: Memorial plaque in the church at Norton.