Benjamin Pollard
c.1911-1914 (Hall Tutor)
BSc. Chemistry
Benjamin Pollard was born in Bath in 1890, second child and eldest son of Benjamin & Cecilia Pollard. Within a few years of his birth, Benjamins’ parents had moved to Manchester where his younger siblings Donald and Pedr were born. As a young boy, Benjamin attended Manchester Grammar School. On leaving he became a student at the University of Manchester, where his older sister Phyllis also studied. Initially living at home, Benjamin moved to St Anslem’s Hostel in 1911, becoming probably the first hall tutor.
Ordained in 1914, Benjamin was initially appointed a deacon to St. Luke’s, Weaste (Salford), but his chemistry skills quickly led to him being recruited into Lord Moulton’s explosives department (subsequently the Ministry of Munitions), developing improved explosives for use in the 1st World War. Following this, Benjamin served for three years as chaplain to the 2nd Battalion, Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry and after the armistice provided relief work in Armenia.
On returning to England, Benjamin was a senior curate at Sheffield Cathedral.
Other appointments followed, including Bradford, Yorkshire, and St Chrysostom's, Victoria Park, Manchester. On leaving St Chrysostom’s in 1928, Benjamin was made first Bishop of Lancaster, at the same time becoming the first University of Manchester graduate (and the first student from the Victorian universities) to sit on the bishop’s bench in the House of Lords. In 1953, his work earned him a prestigious Lambeth degree and in 1954 he was made Bishop of Sodor and Man, a post he held until his retirement in 1966. Benjamin died in April 1967, at the age of seventy-six.
You can find out more about Benjamin’s story here


Harry William Prescott
Gartness Hostel c.1919-1921
St Anselm Hall
B.A. History 2nd Class honours
Harry William Prescott was born in Lee, Kent in 1890. He was one of four siblings born to his Harry Prescott & his wife Alice, although only Harry and his younger brother, John, survived childhood. Harry’s father, Harry senior, worked in politics and by the time Harry was five the family had moved to Bristol where Harry senior worked as the agent for the Liberal Unionist party, a short-lived breakaway group of the Liberal party. In 1907, the family moved again, this time to West Bromwich, Birmingham, where Harry Senior became the new Liberal Unionist Party Agent to the area.
Harry likely served in the First World War in some capacity, but no further information is known. At the end of the war Harry entered the Ordination Test School at Knutsford and subsequently studied for a degree in Economics and Political Science at the University of Manchester, during which time he was a resident first of Gartness Hall and then, following the 1921 merger, of St Anselm Hall. Harry graduated with a 2nd class degree and then went on to complete his ordination training at Bishops College, Chelmsford.
Harry was ordained a deacon in the Bishop of Chelmsford’s 1925 Trinity Ordinations and was made priest in 1926. His first appointment was curate of Holy Trinity, Barking Road, in the East End of London, a position he held from 1925 to 1927. Two further curacies followed; Bickenhill Warwickshire, from 1927 to 1929 and Cove, Surrey, from 1929.
By 1933 Harry was curate in charge of Surlingham, Norfolk and by 1939 he was vicar of Claxton, Norfolk. Unfortunately little is known of Harry’s later career except that in 1959 he was Chaplain to the High Sheriff of Norfolk. Harry died in Eastleigh, Hampshire, in June 1974