Isaac Faulkner
Isaac Faulkner was a surgeon who gathered round him a group of close friends: fellow surgeons, clergymen and mill owners. He settled in Congleton at the end of the reign of George III and had his practice on the High Street. The evidence of his success is shown in the long list of properties he left in his will: houses, shops, and land in the town – on the High Street, Lawton Street, Swan Bank, Mill Street; and on the outskirts – in Priesty Fields, Howey Lane and Bromley Lane. He had other property in Manchester and Burslem.
He died in 1856 at Vale House, the home he shared with his sister Elizabeth and her husband Ralph Sutton, the local magistrate. All three are buried in the same vault.
As well as many legacies of property and money he left three pews and two separate seats in the church. Two pews were occupied by his close friend Charles Vaudrey, mill owner and Chapelwarden. The other pew was occupied by Charles Cobbe, Chapel Clerk, Sexton and Town crier.
His memorial has an enigmatic line: “and he caused the widows heart to sing for joy”. This may be explained by the section of his will in which he left the annual profits of his eight shares in the Congleton Gas Company to provide for twenty poor women of the borough – provided that they were single, over fifty years old and not already receiving parochial aid. The Minister, the Minister`s Warden and the Schoolmaster were to make the distribution in St Peter`s Vestry on the 19th of December each year. He was owed £300 from the estate of William Lowndes because Faulkner had bought an estate for Ann Reddall who lived at Parnell`s Croft until her death, when it was purchased by Edward Pamphilon. (The memorials of Faulkner, Sutton, Cobbe, Reddall and Pamphilon are all in the church)