 | Association |  |
| Association | |
Margaret Leyland, former Council member has died
Many members will remember Margaret Leyland who was a active member of the Friends for many years and served on the Council. Sadly, Margaret died on 21 October 2008.
Margaret’s funeral will take place on Wednesday 29 October at 1100 in the Cathedral.
Obituary: Dr Dennis W Townhill
Dr Dennis William Townhill, OBE, Organist Emeritus at St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, Edinburgh, died on 18th July 2008, and his funeral took place at that Cathedral on Thursday, 24th July 2008.
Dennis was born in Lincoln on 29 May 1925, and his early education was at St Peter-at-Gowts Infant School. He auditioned for Lincoln Cathedral Choir and became a Cathedral chorister in September 1934. In those days Cathedral choristers attended Lincoln (now Christ’s Hospital) School and they wore a distinctive uniform consisting of mortarboard, short (bum-freezer) black jacket and pinstriped black trousers!
He had music lessons from an early age and at the age of thirteen was taught to play the organ. After leaving the Cathedral Choir at the age of fifteen, Dennis took on a succession of Sunday organ jobs and studied the organ under Dr Gordon Slater, the Cathedral Organist and Choir Master.
Dennis became a proficient handbell ringer and his fiancée Mabel Ellingworth was encouraged by John A Freeman (who was Master of the Lincoln Cathedral Company of Bellringers) to attend practices at the Cathedral and to join the ringing for Sunday services. Dennis and Mabel were married at St Peter-at-Gowts, Lincoln, in May 1949, and Michael Freeman was best man.
In 1949 Dennis was appointed organist at St James's Church Louth and Music Master at the Grammar School in that town. After five years Dennis was appointed Organist and Choir Master at St James's Church Grimsby, and then in 1961 to his final post at Edinburgh Cathedral as Organist and Master of the Music.
Dennis and Mabel at grandson Mark Bell's wedding to Claire
He had a very distinguished career in Edinburgh and received a number of honours, culminating with the award of an OBE in 1992. One of his most significant and far reaching innovations was the introduction of girls into the Cathedral choir. A controversial move which has now been taken up by many other Cathedrals. He retired in 1991.
John R Ketteringham
The Bishop of Lincoln with very strong support from many members of the Cathedral Community including the Friends campaigned very strongly for Bailgate Post Office to remain open. I am very pleased to be able to report that this was successful and the Post Office is to remain open. The photograph shows Friends with banner outside the South-west tower of the Cathedral.
After several years of using Lincoln Cathedral as a wintering
roost, this spring, for the first time, the peregrines decided to
stay and breed. Only about 1,200 pairs breed in Britain, normally
on cliff faces and quarry walls but, in recent years, peregrines
have started to nest on high buildings, which they probably see as
the next best thing to a cliff face.
Peregrines don't build a nest as such but just lay their eggs in a shallow hollow or on a suitable flat surface. In early April the birds looked as though they were about to settle down and start breeding so the RSPB approached the Cathedral Authorities about the possibility of setting up an 'Aren't Birds Brilliant' project. A rota of volunteers was organised to show the birds to visitors to the Cathedral at weekends, starting in mid-May and finishing at the end of June. The adult birds were seen taking prey back to the nest site in May and, by early June, we had the first glimpse of the young birds. It was initially thought that only two eggs had been laid. However, by mid-June, we were pleasantly surprised to see three young chicks together for the first time. By the third week in June the young birds were becoming more active, flapping their wings and jumping up and down on the nesting ledge to build up their flight muscles. Disaster almost happened when one of the young birds took its first flight, only to find that flying was a little more difficult than it had imagined! It ended up on the bonnet of a car parked in Minster Yard - not any old car - but a Porsche.
By sheer good fortune the bird was spotted by one of the Cathedral bell-ringers and taken to Weirfield Wildlife Hospital for a check-up and an overnight stay. It was found to be in good health.
The nest-site was not accessible so the bird was returned to a ledge close to the original nest-site where the parents soon responded to its calls for food and continued to feed it. By the end of June all three young had taken to the air and were seen flying short distances .
Edward Rouse Cook was born and brought up at Stapleford, near Cambridge, where he was baptised and confirmed, pumped the organ and learned to ring at St. Andrew's Church.
His education began, unusually, with a governess shared with friends, and then at the Perse School (1936-1946). After National Service, he went up to Lincoln College, Oxford to read modern history, to row for the college and sing at Pusey House Chapel.
Accepted for ordination while in the Army, he came to Lincoln Theological College in 1951. He was made Deacon at Trinity 1953 to serve at St. James', Louth, and priested a year later. There he met Christine and they married in Louth in 1956. They have a son and daughter.
After a brief curacy at Crosby, Scunthorpe, he became Lecturer (senior curate) at St. Botolph's, Boston - the Stump motto is 'Let all things be done discreetly and in order.' Both at Louth and at Boston, he and Christine enjoyed the high standards of music and liturgy.
In 1960 they moved to St. Michael's. Little Coates, a large parish in Grimsby, and in 1967 to Saxilby, where they stayed for 27 years. For 30 years he was involved in the training and chairmanship of Lincoln Diocesan readers. In the 1980s he was an honorary Priest Vicar of the Cathedral, having been made Canon of Lincoln and Prebendary of Empingham in 1979 for his work with Readers. He was Rural Dean of Corringham for 8 years and received Maundy Money from the Queen in 2000.
He enjoyed singing tenor with the Lincoln Orpheus Male Voice Choir from 1972, Lincoln Choral Society from 1994 and, with Christine, in the Scothern Chorale.
In 1984 the Chairman of the Friends of the Cathedral, Revd Mark Spurrell, Vicar of Stow, unexpectedly resigned and moved to the Oxford Diocese. Edward Cook filled the vacancy but made it clear that he believed that the Friends should be chaired by a lay person and at the 1987 AGM Jack Laird was elected to this post. However, he supported the Friends in several ways the most important being his management of the 600 or so Patronal Cards which were sent to the parishes each year - a formidable task.
Edward and his wife Christine retired to Dunholme in 1994. In his
retirement he ministered to 86 different churches and the Cathedral
and was also able to advance his bellringing.
Chad Varah was born in the Vicarage at Barton-on-Humber on 12 November 1911, the eldest son of Canon and Mrs WE Varah. He was named after the founder of the eighth century St. Peter's Church at Barton, St Chad, and his surname is found on Yorkshire tombstones as far back as 1490. Chad was educated at Worksop College and Keble College, Oxford where he read Natural Sciences and received his BA in 1933. An adopted uncle who was a retired missionary Bishop persuaded him to become a student at Lincoln Theological College, where his theological training was conducted under Michael Ramsey, later Archbishop of Canterbury.
In 1935 Chad Varah was made deacon to serve in the newly created parish of St Giles in Lincoln, and the following year he had the unique distinction of being ordained Priest in the recently consecrated Church of St Giles with the well beloved Canon Daniels as vicar. Owing to the illness of the vicar, his first task after ordination was to conduct the funeral service of a fourteen year old girl who had committed suicide through ignorance of the sexual problems of puberty and having no one to whom she could talk. This led Chad Varah to give talks on sex to the young, first at St Giles Youth Club and then to couples about to be married. In 1938 he moved first to Putney and two years later to Barrow-in-Furness and then on in 1942 to Holy Trinity, Blackburn as Vicar. In 1950 he moved back to London, to St. Paul's Clapham Junction, where, in addition to his parish work he was scriptwriter for teenage magazines Eagle and Girl.
Then in 1953 Chad was offered the living of the Lord Mayor's parish church of St Stephen, Walbrook. As this parish has few resident parishioners, he had the opportunity he had been looking for - to found a service for the suicidal which he called The Samaritans. So the work began for which Chad Varah had dedicated himself in 1935 at St Giles. When he first announced that people contemplating suicide were invited to telephone him on Man 9000, he had no idea that he was founding a worldwide movement.
In 1940 Chad Varah had married Doris Susan Whanslawe (who died in 1993) and they had a daughter and four sons (three of them triplets). Chad Varah was awarded the OBE in 1969 and was made a Prebendary of St Paul's Cathedral in 1975. He received a number of other honours including an honorary Doctorate of Law from Leicester University. On the rare occasions when he had any spare time he liked travelling off the beaten track and reading. His autobiography was published in 1992 and in October 1993 he unveiled a plaque at Lincoln Theological College commemorating his time there and the commencement of his ministry at St Giles.
FURTHER READING: Varah, Chad. Before I Die Again (1992)