THE story of Evan Jenkins is not one regaled often these days but the Rector of Manafon earned national notoriety in 1892.

Evan had not been a popular man in his parish, culminating in effigies of him being erected around the village and protests by villagers.

Evan was born in Glamorganshire and graduated from Oxford University in 1855, building several schools and chapels in north Wales before taking a post in Manafon.

However Evan had protested the decree of the Archbishop of St Asaph to conduct evening services in Welsh.

While in Manafon the rector’s past had threatened to come back and haunt him when a letter, alleging him to have been a drunk, reached the Archbishop of Canterbury who had demanded answers.

It had emerged that five years earlier he had argued with a man while both intoxicated and he had only been awarded the parish of Manafon in 1880 after five years of sobriety.

Manafon had been predominantly Welsh speaking village but Evan had refused to conduct services in Welsh for three years when the Archbishop of Canterbury received the damning letter in 1887 complaining of the Reverend of Manafon.

It was alleged he had ‘made himself obnoxious to his parishioners’ and accused the bishop of ‘making the parish a convalescent home for bachelor rectors and their housekeepers.'

Evan had further alienated the locals by refusing to reduce his own rents and led to a peaceful demonstration against him between November and December 1888 with accounts at the time reporting ‘his policy tended to irritate and embitter his parishioners’ feelings towards him.’

His house was targeted by vandals and effigies of him and his housekeeper ‘caused much amusement’ while throughout the area children sang ‘His pious nose in pink, and this is the reason why, you may find his stomach empty, but you’ll never find it dry.’

Evan had taken to drinking once again and by 1890 he had left Manafon and and spent time living with family in Cardiff and two years in an asylum.

Evan left the asylum angry and bitter, accusing his family of seeking to steal from him while decrying the ‘starvation and diabolical barbarities of a lunatic asylum’

Evan alleged he had witnessed a ‘slave trade’ of murdered patients being sold to anatomists or ‘composts for the fields’.

By the end of 1892 he returned to his post in Manafon.

However Evan was barely back three months when he was fined for drunkenness, earning him national notoriety.

Evan had appeared at Berriew Magistrates Court, infamously throwing down a sovereign to pay his costs before biding the magistrates and chief constable ‘good morning and striding out of court.’

The adjourned case only began after a search for Evan had found him asleep in the Lion Inn before he pleaded guilty to drunk and disorderly and using ‘very filthy language’ at the door of Richard Andrew’s mother’s house.

Evan could not stay out of trouble.

Summons for drunkenness in Kerry were quickly followed by a drunken assault on a police constable in New Mills.

Evan left Manafon in 1893 without a penny and would never return.

He lived a nomadic existence and between 1899 and 1911 he is recorded living in London, Oldham, Essex, Stoke, Glamorganshire, Broughton and Shrewsbury before retiring in Flint.

He continued to serve the church though he would never again court the controversy he had in Manafon.