Walter Hook
English cleric; Dean of Chichester (1798–1875)
Walter Farquhar Hook (13 March 1798 – 20 October 1875), known to his contemporaries as Dr Hook, was an eminent Victorian churchman.
He was the Vicar of Leeds responsible for the construction of the current Leeds Minster and for many ecclesiastical and social improvements to the city in the mid-nineteenth century. His achievements, as a High Churchman and Tractarian in a non-conformist city are remarkable. Later in life, he became Dean of Chichester.
Biography
Early life
Hook was born the son of James Hook, FRS and his wife Anne Farquhar, daughter of Sir Walter Farquhar MD, in London on 13 March 1798, and educated first at Blundell's School in Tiverton, Devon, then Winchester College, and Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated in 1821. He obtained his MA in 1824, and his BD and DD in 1837. On taking Holy Orders in 1822, he served first as a curate at his father's church, St Mildred's Church, Whippingham on the Isle of Wight, later as vicar at St Mary's Church, Moseley, Birmingham, and, in 1828, vicar of the Holy Trinity Church, Coventry. He married Anna Delicia, (1811 – 5 April 1871) daughter of Dr John Johnstone of Birmingham on 4 June 1829 and they had several children. One daughter, Charlotte Jane Hook, married William Stephens, who went on to be Dean on Winchester from 1895 to 1902.
Leeds
His support for the ideals of the Tractarians exposed him to considerable criticism, but his "simple manly character and zealous devotion to parochial work gained him the support of widely divergent classes", according to the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.
“Walter Hook” enters the record as english cleric; Dean of Chichester (1798–1875). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Walter, Hook and English can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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