Reverend Philip William Douglas (1806–1871) was the first perpetual curate of St Philip & St James, Escot, appointed when the church was consecrated in 1840. Born into the Douglas family of Larkbeare House, Talaton, he was educated for the Anglican ministry and served the newly formed ecclesiastical district carved out of Ottery St Mary and Talaton. His tenure coincided with the early years of the church’s establishment, when the building functioned as a chapel of ease for the Escot estate and the scattered population around Fairmile. Douglas’s role was primarily pastoral, overseeing services, baptisms, burials, and the routine administration of a rural nineteenth‑century parish.
Douglas married Charlotte Maria Biscoe, and together they had ten children. Large clerical families were common in the period, reflecting both social expectations and the practical realities of rural parsonage life. The Douglas children were raised between the rectory at Escot and the wider Talaton district, forming part of the local social fabric alongside estate workers, tenant farmers, and the Kennaway family at Escot House. Several of the children later entered professional or military careers typical of middle‑class Victorian families, while others remained connected to Devon through marriage or local service.
The Douglas family’s presence at Escot is recorded in parish registers and memorials, including the brass tablet commemorating Brevet Lieutenant Colonel James Mainwaring Douglas, one of Philip William’s sons, who died at Jutogh in 1881 while serving with the Royal Artillery. The memorial emphasises the family’s long association with both Talaton and the wider imperial world, reflecting the pattern of clerical families whose children frequently entered military or administrative service across the British Empire.
Reverend Douglas remained at Escot until his death in 1871, after which the parish underwent further administrative changes as pastoral responsibilities shifted between Talaton, Ottery St Mary, and the surrounding districts. His tenure represents the formative period of St Philip & St James, when the church transitioned from an estate chapel to a recognised parish centre. The Douglas family’s decade‑spanning presence forms a significant part of the early history of the church in the field.
