File:Downend Church (3250240296).jpg

English: Christ Church parish church, Downend, Bristol, seen from the east in snow. It doesn't often snow in Bristol – and the comination of bright sunlight and snow is even more unusual. But this was the scene on the morning of 3 February 2009.

Christ Church, Downend, Gloucestershire was built as a chapel of ease to St James, Mangotsfield, in 1831 and was elevated to a parish church in 1874 when an Act of Parliament made Downend a independent parish. It contains memorial plaques to WG Grace and other members of the Grace family.

During the decade before its elevation to parish church status the curate of Downend had been an Irishman, the Rev John Walter Dann. It's likely that, from 1874-1878, the then Vicar of Mangotsfield, the Rev Alfred Peache, doubled as Vicar of Downend with Dann as curate probably taking most of the services. Then, in 1878, Dann was ordained Vicar and he remained the incumbent until his death in 1915. Almost certainly Dann was the first occupant of the Vicarage.

Alfred Peache and John Dann were both interesting characters. Alfred, who was born in Lambeth in 1818, was the only surviving son of the industrialist James Courthope Peache. He, amongst other achievements, was responsible for the design of the Paxman "Peache Patent" High-Speed Single-Acting Steam Engines manufactured by Davey, Paxman & Co of Colchester. During a long life he amassed a considerable fortune some of which he used in the support of ecclesiastical and educational institutions. One example was his support for the living at Mangotsfield.

In 1842, perhaps with help from his father, the 23-year-old Alfred Peache was installed as curate of Mangotsfield under the Rev Robert Brodie who had been parish priest there since 1822. Then, in 1854 Alfred became curate of Heckfield in Hampshire. Although it has a huge church, Heckfield was – and still is – a tiny village and, as such, would warrant no more than a curate. Thus Alfred was the parish priest and could regard the move as a promotion. He was still in post at Heckfield when his father died in 1858 and Robert Brodie retired in 1859. By consequence of these two events Alfred inherited a considerable fortune and the living at Mangotsfield. He became one of the wealthiest clergymen in England and one of the most important benefactors of the Church of England. Some 20 or 30 English vicarages and churches, the London College of Divinity all became Peache beneficiaries. Included amongst them were the vicarages at Mangotsfield and Downend. After resigning as Vicar of Downend he retired to a house in Cambridge Park, Twickenham from where his influence spread yet wider. He was Chancellor of the Western Division of Ontario, Canada, in 1885 and became a benefactor of Huron College in Toronto. He died in Twickenham in the final months of 1900 but his memory is enshrined in the name of a road that, apropriately enough, runs from Mangotsfield to Downend.

John Dann was born in County Cork in 1842. When he died in 1915 he was sufficiently well known in cricketing circles to merit the following obituary in the 1915/16 Wisden's Almanack:

"THE REV. JOHN WALTER DANN, M. A. brother-in-law of the late Dr. W. G. Grace, was born at Fermoy, County Cork, on November 20, 1842, and died at Downend, of which parish he had been Vicar for 47* years, on July 22. He was never much of a cricketer, but took a keen interest in the game, and played occasionally for the Thornbury and Downend clubs. He took a very active part in the formation of the Gloucestershire County C. C., undertaking practically all the correspondence in the matter for the late Dr. H. M. Grace. In his younger days he was an excellent lawn tennis player, and he played quite a good game until he was 70."

WG Grace, the most famous cricketer of all time, came from a Downend family and John Dann's status as his brother-in-law came as a result of his marriage on 23 June 1869 to WG's sister, Elizabeth Blanche Grace. That was while Downend was still a Chapel of Ease so the marriage took place in its mother church, St James, Mangotsfield. John Dann was born eight years before WG – enough for him to have been appointed tutor to the young cricketer. He also outlived him by eight years.

• In fact, although Dann was at Downend for 47 years, he was only Vicar for the last 37 of them.

Sources for the above include the National Archives, Oxford University Alumni, 1500-1886, 'The University of London and its Colleges' by Stanley Gordon Francis Wilson, 1923 (pp 99-100), 'Our Parish Mangotsfield Including Downend' by Arthur Emlyn-Jones (1899) and various Kelly's county directories.