Early life
Austin Humphrey Balleine (1885-1952) was born in Oxfordshire of a Jersey family. He came to the island at the age of three when his father, George Orange Balleine was appointed Dean and was educated at Victoria College.
Balleine was very successful at school, winning medals for Classics and French, before gaining a Channel Island Exhibition to Exeter College, Oxford, where he obtained his Masters in Theology in 1910, two years after his ordination. He was appointed domestic chaplain to the Bishop of Wakefield in 1912.
War service
He joined up and was appointed temporary chaplain to the forces in 1914. He worked for most of the time in military hospitals and after being mentioned in dispatches four times by Lord Haig, he was awarded the OBE at the end of the war.
After the war he was a Vicar of two parishes in Birmingham, and after that in Somerset. When World War 2 broke out he was appointed billeting officer with the responsibility for rehousing evacuees, including the 15 small boys housed in his own vicarage.
He died in 1950 after an operation.
