Wall, Iram Gladstone (1891-1968)

Transcription of obituary published in the Minutes of Conference

IRAM GLADSTONE WALL: born at Stapleford, Nottingham, in 1891 and entered the Primitive Methodist Ministry in 1922. He had begun to preach at the age of seventeen and soon was known as an outstanding preacher, but was nearly thirty when the Rev. T.R. Auty, coming into his circuit, told him he ought to be in the Ministry. He took the necessary examinations and did so well that he was sent straight on probation to Bournemouth and then to Stoke and Longton. He was ordained on 2 May 1926, and proceeded under the Home Missions Committee to Springfield Road, Bexhill. After a term at Dartford, Kent, he went to the old Canaan Circuit in Nottingham, and when this circuit was amalgamated with Nottingham East, he completed another term in the new circuit. This was followed by eight years in the Nottingham West Circuit, so that half of his ministry was spent in Nottingham. 

One who came to Nottingham in 1955 said they still talked of Iram Wall as the most outstanding preacher they had known. He was in constant demand for Anniversaries, especially Sunday School Anniversaries, and was very effective with children. Further happy ministries were spent at Skelmersdale in Lancashire, and at Peterborough. He retired in 1963, but he could not refuse an invitation to serve as an active supernumerary at Bexhill at Little Common, where he was overjoyed to be able to take part in the building of church extensions. Unfortunately, in his third year he contracted septicemia, and was forced to retire to Barrow-on-Trent. 

He was a man of strong convictions, which gave his preaching a sense of authority. When asked about the after life, he replied that ‘that was one thing he was absolutely certain about’. He came to the Ministers’ Flats at Barrow on 1 August 1967, and, after a brave struggle, he died on Whit Sunday, 2 June 1968, in the seventy-seventh year of his age and the forty-sixth of his ministry.

Family

Iram was born on 9 December 1891 at Stapleford, Nottinghamshire, to parents Stephen Wall and Sarah Agnes Richardson.

Before entering the ministry Iram worked as a lace draughtsman (1911).

He married Alice Catherine Sutherland (1893-1980) in the spring of 1926 at Stapleford PM Chapel, Nottinghamshire.

Iram died on 2 June 1968 at Barrow on Trent, Derbyshire..

Circuits

• 1922 Bournemouth I
• 1923 Stoke & Longton
• 1926 Bexhill
• 1928 Dartford
• 1932 Nottingham I
• 1935 Nottingham E
• 1944 Nottingham W
• 1952 Skelmersdale
• 1959 Peterborough
• 1963 Bexhill (Sup)

References

Methodist Minutes 1969/177

W Leary, Directory of Primitive Methodist Ministers and their Circuits, 1990

Census Returns and Births, Marriages & Deaths Registers