Father Frederic Aidan Crow was born in Louth, Lincolnshire, on the 29th July, 1863. He came to Ampleforth at the age of twenty-three, having acquired some business training which he turned to good account in the various works to which he was at different times set. After his novitiate and three further years of study at Belmont he returned to Ampleforth in 1891. Soon he was placed in the Procurator's office which, never a place of leisured quiet, was then especially enlivened by the building, by direct labour and without a contractor, of what was long known as the New Monastery. The work was (to adapt a recent notable saying) a paradise for Prior Burge with his copious imagination, and a nightmare for a Procurator with slender means. It proved too severe for Father Aidan, and the strain of those years left its mark on him for the rest of his life. In January 1898 he was sent to St Alban's, Warrington, and afterwards worked at St Peter's, Liverpool, Spilsby and St Mary's, Cardiff. In 1906 he became Bishop Hedley's secretary; not secretary only but hero-worshipper; his happiest hours in after life were spent in recalling memories of that long association. He was a canon of the then Benedictine chapter of the diocese of Newport, and with his duties as secretary combined work in many hard-pressed centres in south Wales. In 1918 he was appointed to Maryport in Cumberland, where he spent eleven years of considerable hardship. These were followed, from January 1929, by a slightly longer period at Parbold. In these quiet places his priestly fidelity and human kindliness won the affection and gratitude of his humblest parishioners, which softened, we may hope, the sadness of failing health and a brooding imagination. How severe were his disabilities and how courageous his resistance, became clear to many perhaps only by the rapidity of his decline when at last he yielded. Late last summer he found he could continue no longer. He died at Stillington Hall on 26th of August. May he rest in peace.
FREDERICK AIDAN CROW 26 August 1941
1863 29 Jul Born at South Lincoln
He was a convert to the faith when a young man
He served in a bank for some years
Was a postulant here
1887 8 Sep Habit at Belmont
1888 14 Sep Simple Vows
1889 3 May Minor Orders
1892 17 Jan Solemn Vows Ampleforth
20 Mar Subdiaconate
1893 30 Apr Diaconate
1895 31 Mar Priesthood
Procurator
1898 Jan Assistant at St Alban's Warrington
1902 Mar Assistant at St Peter's Liverpool
1904 May Incumbent at Spilsby Lincolnshire
Mar Secretary to Bishop Hedley & was later made Canon of Newport
Assistant at Merthyr Tydvil
1913 Lived at Belmont for about a year & then acted as chaplain at
Courtfield
1917 Oct Assistant at Workington
1918 Aug Incumbent at Maryport
1929 Jan Parbold
1941 26 Aug Died at the Alexian Brothers Home at Stillington where he had
been only a short time
Buried at Ampleforth