John Temple CB (1839 - 1922)
From the Atlantic cable to St Anne's
John Temple was one of the most significant benefactors of St Anne’s after its founders.
His gifts helped shape the church we see today, most notably through the rebuilding of the chancel and the great east window. Yet Temple’s significance extends far beyond Aigburth: as a young engineer, he played a part in one of the great technological achievements of the Victorian age:
establishing a permanent telegraph connection across the Atlantic.
Born at Colne, Lancashire, on 18 April 1839, Temple entered the telegraph service as a young man, working in Leeds, Manchester and London. In 1856 he joined the newly formed Atlantic Telegraph Company and became secretary to its engineer-in-chief, Sir Charles Bright. He subsequently joined Bright's engineering staff.
The company's ambition was extraordinary for its time: to lay a telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean, allowing Europe and North America to communicate electrically rather than waiting for messages to cross by ship.
Across the Atlantic
Temple served aboard H.M.S. Agamemnon during the early Atlantic cable expeditions. In 1858 the enterprise finally succeeded in establishing a connection between Valentia in Ireland and Newfoundland. Queen Victoria and US President James Buchanan exchanged messages across the new cable, although the connection failed after only a few weeks.
Temple's career in submarine telegraphy continued. In 1859 he joined Glass, Elliot & Co., later part of the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company, and spent more than four years based in Malta as an engineer on the Malta–Alexandria cable and other Mediterranean projects.
John Temple CB (1839–1922), pictured in 1917.
Digitally restored from a contemporary portrait published in the Warrington Guardian, 6 January 1917.
Original image accessed via Findmypast.
H.M.S. Agamemnon during the storm of 21 June 1858.
John Temple served aboard the ship during the 1858 Atlantic cable expedition.
Painting by Henry Clifford. Public domain. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
By 1865 he was back at the centre of the attempt to cross the Atlantic. This time the cable was carried aboard the enormous steamship Great Eastern. Temple served on the engineering staff under Samuel Canning, alongside Henry Clifford, and contemporary accounts place him among those with responsibility for the engineering work.
The 1865 expedition came agonisingly close to success before the cable broke and disappeared into the Atlantic. The following year Great Eastern returned and successfully laid a new cable.
Temple then participated in an equally remarkable operation: recovering the lost cable of 1865 from the ocean floor. Working aboard the grappling vessel Albany, he was placed in engineering charge and helped locate and raise the lost line. Contemporary accounts describe the repeated attempts to grapple for a cable lying miles beneath the Atlantic. The recovered cable was eventually completed, giving the Atlantic two working telegraph connections.
John Temple with members of the Atlantic cable expedition at Valentia, Ireland, in June 1865.
Temple is the bearded figure pointing towards the map, selecting a landing place for the cable.
After a sketch by Joseph Becker, published in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, 15 July 1865.
Public domain. Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection / Internet Archive, via Wikimedia Commons.
Within little more than a decade, communication between Britain and North America had been transformed from a journey measured in days and weeks to one measured in minutes.
Making the Splice between the Shore End and the Ocean Cable by Robert Charles Dudley.
The scene shows the 1866 Atlantic cable expedition aboard the Great Eastern.
John Temple was among the members of the expedition portrayed by Dudley.
Credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Public Domain.
From submarine cables to wire rope
In January 1867 Temple became managing director of the Warrington Wire Rope Works, later becoming its chairman. His association with the company would last for more than half a century.
The connection between his two careers was a natural one. Submarine telegraph cables and wire ropes both depended upon the increasingly sophisticated manufacture and manipulation of metal wire, and Temple brought extensive practical engineering experience from the cable industry.
The Warrington company became a supplier to the Admiralty. Temple himself worked closely with the Admiralty for many years on confidential technical work.
His obituary in The Engineer recorded that:
“For a period of thirty nine years he acted in close co-operation with the Admiralty in connection with a highly technical and secret product which was extensively used during the late war.”
The precise nature of that product was never disclosed.
In January 1917, during the First World War, Temple was appointed Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB). A later obituary described the honour as recognition of the confidential work he had undertaken for the Admiralty over a long period.
John Temple and Aigburth
Temple eventually made his home at Mossley Bank, Aigburth, and became a significant local benefactor.
In 1899 he gave Aigburth its People's Hall, a substantial community building close to Sefton Park. His most visible surviving contribution locally, however, is here at St Anne's.
John and his first wife, Mary Anne Temple, were responsible for the new chancel. The surviving inscriptions in the church preserve slightly different dates: one records that John Temple “erected this Chancel in 1913”, while another states: “This Chancel was erected by John and Mary Anne Temple 1914.”
Rather than attempting to reconcile the two contemporary inscriptions, both dates are retained here.
The surviving inscription recording the building of the chancel by John and Mary Anne Temple.
The 1923 memorial recording Katherine Mary Temple’s gift of the chancel panelling in memory of her husband.
Memorial to Katherine Mary Temple (1875–1938), John Temple's second wife.
John and Mary Anne also gave the great east window above the altar, depicting Our Lord Enthroned in Glory. Its surviving inscription reads:
“THE GIFT OF
JOHN AND MARY TEMPLE”
Mary Anne died before her husband. In 1917 Temple married Katherine Mary, who became his second wife. John Temple died on 17 May 1922, aged 83. The following year Katherine completed another stage of the work at St Anne's. A memorial plaque in the chancel records:
"The surrounding panelling is now added by his widow Katherine Mary Temple 1923.”
Katherine survived him until 1938 and is also commemorated in the chancel (see above).
The east window of St Anne's, depicting
Our Lord Enthroned in Glory.
It was given by John and Mary Anne Temple; the inscription along its lower edge reads:
“The Gift of John and Mary Temple.”
A link with the first age of global communications
John Temple's memorial at St Anne's commemorates considerably more than a successful Victorian industrialist.
As a young engineer he was involved in the pioneering attempts to span the Atlantic with an electrical cable. He was there during the expeditions aboard Agamemnon and Great Eastern, worked on submarine cables in the Mediterranean, and participated in the extraordinary recovery of the lost Atlantic cable from the ocean floor.
He subsequently spent more than fifty years associated with the Warrington Wire Rope Works and nearly four decades working confidentially with the Admiralty.
The chancel and east window at St Anne's provide a particularly tangible connection between that history and Aigburth. More than a century after John, Mary Anne and Katherine Temple made their gifts to the church, their work remains part of the building today.
Sources & Historical Acknowledgements
This account was compiled using contemporary records, published histories, museum collections and surviving memorial inscriptions at St Anne’s Church, Aigburth. Principal sources include The Engineer (2 June 1922); Liverpool Engineering Society, Obituaries (1923); Warrington Guardian (6 January 1917); The London Gazette (1 January 1917); William Howard Russell, The Atlantic Telegraph (1865); Henry Martyn Field, The Story of the Atlantic Telegraph; and Edward Brailsford Bright and Charles Bright, The Life Story of the Late Sir Charles Tilston Bright.
Research into the Atlantic cable expeditions and their participants also drew on the collections and research resources of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Becker Collection at Boston College, the Science Museum Group, and the History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications archive.
The surviving inscriptions and memorials within St Anne’s provide primary evidence for John and Mary Anne Temple’s gift of the chancel and east window, Katherine Mary Temple’s subsequent gift of the chancel panelling, and John and Katherine Temple’s dates.
Acknowledgement
St Anne’s Parochial Church Council gratefully acknowledges the institutions and archives that have made historical material relating to John Temple and the Atlantic cable expeditions available for research and public access. Particular thanks are due to Ruth Anders and to Findmypast, the latter specifically for assistance with enquiries concerning the 1917 Warrington Guardian portrait of John Temple.