Frederick John Moule was the third son of Henry Moule [1801 - 1880] and Mary Mullett Evans and the first of their children to be born in Fordington on the 10th May 1830. He was duly baptised by his father the Vicar of St George’s church on 17th June that year, and taught at home with other paying students in preparation for university.

Bell ringing at St George’s Fordington

According to his brother Handley, he was the mechanician of the family. Before he went to Cambridge (which he did at the age of 20) he actually superintended the improvement of the peal of church bells at Fordington, and trained a team of bell ringers. He was a constant encouragement to Handley, the youngest of the brothers, and managed to get him to ring a peal of bells even though he was still only 8 years old. He was adept however at all manner of tools and he taught Handley for example how to use the old lathe they had.

Education

He went initially to Caius College in Cambridge which he entered on 26 June 1850. By 1851 he was still studying, but his place in the house had been given over to paying pupils so when he came home he lived with his elder brother George Evans Moule at Cuckolds Row in Fordington. He matriculated in that year but then transferred to Corpus Christie College on 26 June 1852, where he obtained a BA in 1855 and an MA in 1858.

Curate of Fordington for 9 years

Frederick like his father & elder brother George settled on a career in the church and in 1857 was ordained by Bishop Hamilton of Salisbury. In 1859 as a priest he was licensed to his fathers parish in Fordington where he operated as Curate until October 1868.

Marriage

It is not clear how Frederick met his wife but he married Mary Alicia Foster on the 22 August 1860 in her home parish of Hitchin in Hertfordshire.  Mary had been born in Hitchin on 13th June 1841 and baptised there on 29th September that year. She was the daughter of Oswald Foster a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and his wife Martha. Mary was therefore 19 old when she married, and 11 years younger than Frederick. They settled into the house next door to his fathers vicarage in Fordington called Salisbury House and by 1868 when he was awarded his own parish they had  successfully raised 3 children there.

Chaplain to the Dorset County Asylum

In 1864 he took on the additional responsibility of Chaplain to the newly opened Dorset County Asylum. This was quite an extensive set of buildings set in 56 acres of land situated a mile from Charminster and about two and a half miles from Fordington. When it opened in 1864 it had 320 patients roughly split evenly between males and females. Some patients came from as far away as Oxford and Abergavenny. Frederick seems to have passed these responsibilities onto a new Chaplain the Rev Hyson in the spring of 1867, presumably in preparation for his own Ministry.

St Peters Church Yaxley

In 1868 Yaxley was in Huntingdonshire but it is actually situated quite close to Peterborough in present day Cambridgeshire. A further child was born here and Frederick served for 23 years as Vicar until 1891 when the Lord Chancellor appointed him to the Rectory of St Laurence in Norwich where he remained until just before his death.

Frederick died at the age of 71 at his residence at 49 Unthank Road in Norwich on Friday 7 December 1900. Mary lived until she was 96 years old passing away on 27th January 1937 at the White House Southrepps Norwich.