Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Reyner, George Fearns
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
1817-1892
History
Born on 12th November 1817 in Ashton under Lyne, Lancashire to William and Sarah Reyner. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School and in 1835 he entered St. John’s College Cambridge. He was a 4th Wrangler in 1839 and became a Fellow of the College in 1840. He then held the position of Sadlerian Lecturer in Mathematics from 1847-57. He was Junior Dean of St. John’s from 1848-1851 and then Senior Bursar from 1857-1876.
Whilst he was Senior Bursar he was one of the people who oversaw the development of the Platt estates in Kentish Town into the general estates of the College. From 1862-1885 more than 700 house leases were granted on the estate, plus shops, a school and All Saints Church. The rents from these estates helped sustain the College through the agricultural depression.
He was also one of the team of people who agreed to the appointment of Gilbert Scott in 1862 to design and construct the new college chapel. The death of Henry Hoare in 1866 caused considerable problems for financing the chapel as Hoare had offered to pay for the chapel tower in installments over his lifetime and he died with only £2,000 paid of the £6,000 the tower was due to cost. Hoare’s son told the College that he would only pay for the tower if the College gave him the living of Staplehurst, where his family lived, to enable his brother to become rector there. The College refused, with the result that they themselves paid for the tower, keeping the Staplehurst living, which Reyner himself took up in 1876. The chapel was consecrated in 1869, coming in vastly over budget.
Reyner was criticised as Bursar by his successors as having allowed the College to engage in reckless expenditure and by inflating the College revenues by doing one-off things (such as the sale of timber from Brookfield Wood) that were not sustainable.
Reyner died in Staplehurst on 16th September 1892, having been the rector of Staplehurst parish for 16 years. He was buried in Staplehurst cemetery.
Places
Legal status
Functions, occupations and activities
Mandates/sources of authority
Internal structures/genealogy
General context
Relationships area
Access points area
Subject access points
Place access points
Occupations
Control area
Authority record identifier
Institution identifier
Rules and/or conventions used
Status
Level of detail
Dates of creation, revision and deletion
Language(s)
Script(s)
Sources
St John's College Cambridge: A History by Peter Linehan, 2011.