MAN OF ROSS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 November 1940, Page 7

MAN OF ROSS

DELIGHTED IN GIVING MONEY AWAY. The Man of Ross came into the world on May 22, 1637, at the White House of Dymock in Gloucestershire. He was John Kyrle, son of Walter Kyrle of Ross in Herefordshire, where the family had lived for centuries. By the time he was 13 John inherited his father’s estates at Ross and elsewhere, and after attending Ross grammar school and Oxford, he retired to Ross where he lived in extreme simplicity. Giving away every spare penny, he was always ready and anxious to help on good works in his town and neighbourhood. If there was any improvement to be made, the Man of Ross did what he could to make it. He taught himself’ building and landscape gardening. and nothing pleased this astonishing man more than to give a neighbour all the money he needed to enlarge and rebuild his house and improve his estate, on condition that he himself might plan everything and superintend the work. He planted trees whenever and wherever he could. The elm was his favourite and there are today grand old Gloucestershire elms standing as memorials to the Man of Ross. It was he who gave Ross an avenue of elms leading to the church; and after acquiring a little knoll close by he laid it out with shady walks and pleasant paths. He repaired the church spire, and is said to have given the gallery and pulpit. Once every week he used to visit the dame’s school, reproving naughty boys, and making sure the scholars were well taught. A tall, broad-shouldered man with a red face and a big nose, John Kyrle’s door was open to all who cared to sit down to dine with him, and whatever was left of a good meal was given to the poor. He was never married, and after living a wonderfully full and useful life, he died at 88 in 172-1. He sleeps in the church he loved, and his monument, erected many years after he had passed on, is on the north wall of the chancel. In 1877 the Kyrle Society was formed to change waste plots of ground into gardens, and carry on the work of the Man of Ross.