Although H.A. Hammond is known among Brethren as the man in whose Bournemouth home, JND died, and who edited a volume of JND’s hymns, his early career is less well known. The Hammond family had owned St Alban’s Court, Nonington, Kent, (midway between Canterbury and Dover) since 1555, and it was here that Henry Anthony Hammond [1829-1910], the youngest son of William Osmund Hammond, was born. He was educated at Eton College and Merton College, Oxford where he graduated BA in 1852, and MA in 1854. He was ordained as a deacon (1853) and as a priest (1854) by the Bishop of Oxford and served as a curate in Buckinghamshire and Southborough, on the outskirts of Tunbridge Wells. One of his brothers was killed in the Crimean War; another, the Rev. Egerton Douglas Hammond, assisted at HAH’s wedding in 1861 to Catherine Charlotte Deacon. From 1863 to 1867 he served as the Perpetual Curate of Holy Trinity, Dover during which time he compiled Our National Temperance Hymn and Song Book with Recitations for Adults and Children. The circumstances of his secession from the Church of England appear to be unrecorded but the otherwise well-informed account of the Hammond family and their estate in Nonington. makes absolutely no mention of HAH. See https://www.nonington.org.uk/eswalt-later-st-albans-court-nonington/the-hammonds-at-st-albans-court/ . Timothy Stunt
